


Vox

by Sphealrical



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Carlos & Cecil are established, Established Relationship, Gen, Jon and Martin are slow burn, M/M, Manipulation, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23098117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sphealrical/pseuds/Sphealrical
Summary: Each universe, in the grand scheme of things, is a line. It takes two lines--specifically, the curved lines that make up the entities' and humanity's universes--to make a vertex. Perfectly located between these vertices is a town full of supernatural events, and it is the duty of the Magnus Institute to catalogue and research these events. Jon, Tim, Sasha, and Martin: welcome to Night Vale.
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 72
Kudos: 144





	1. History Read

**Author's Note:**

> Important for Night Vale fans who don't listen to TMA: there are fourteen "entities" which comprise humanity's fourteen universal fears. You'll see things like "The Eye" or "The Spiral" in this fic, and if you're having trouble, [you can find all the entities on this list! (Warning for obvious spoilers)](https://the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/The_Entities#Smirke.27s_List)
> 
> Important for TMA fans who don't listen to Night Vale: Night Vale is fucking weird and I love it so much, but one very important aspect is that it exists on a separate plane of existence from what I guess you'd call "Normal Earth". This'll be important later.
> 
> Chapter title based on ["History Read" by The Altogether!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBvpUCCu9gI)
> 
> Thank you so much to my friends Sami and Ace for betaing!!! And a HUGE shout-out to Cole for all of their input!!!! It was a huge help for this first chapter, and the structure of it works a lot better now.
> 
> The only real difference between a research expedition and a vacation is whether or not you have to accept your boss's emails. Welcome to Night Vale.

Depending on who you ask, Night Vale does not exist at all. Or, if it is “real”, it was theoretically founded sometime between 0 C.E. and the present, which is a very narrow window of time in the grand scheme of things. The official story: the fifth group of settlers to stumble upon the land that would be Night Vale simply shrugged their shoulders, put their packs down, and the rest is history.

* * *

Jon is nothing if not a grateful guest. Carlos has been nice enough to allow Jon and his assistants to use one of the only surviving lab spaces left in Night Vale, and Jon knows that. While Carlos works with them, it’s only polite to let him have majority control over the work environment.

This did not mean that Jon had to like it.

The archives had been his ideal scenario, and surely anything following that was going to seem annoying just by mere comparison. That being said, Jon’s put up with quite a few… _distractions,_ to put it diplomatically. But Jon was _not_ going to bring up that Carlos has the local radio on—just loud enough for the entire lab space to hear—while he helps Jon and the others set up the lab space as they need it.

There might be space to complain if either Tim or Sasha were distracted by the monotonous, albeit pleasant, voice of the news host, but both of Jon’s subordinates had been—and continue to be—appropriately productive despite also being very vocal about their excitement to hear Martin’s interview. 

“Poor guy was shaking in his boots,” Sasha says, keys clicking as she runs the centrifuge control panel’s start-up and begins queuing through its calibration sequences.

“He’ll do great,” Tim says offhandedly. “You know Martin, he starts off anxious but once he gets the swing of the conversation, there’s no one he can’t get on his side.”

Carlos chuckles from his table. “Sounds like some things never change,” he says. “It’s been awhile, but If he’s anything like the Martin I remember, Cecil’s gonna love him.”

“Tim,” Jon says. “How is the satellite communicator coming along?”

“I’m about…” Tim scratches his head with the wrench. “halfway through now, I’d say.”

Jon huffs then flinches at a sudden clamor of metal on metal. He whirls around, and Sasha’s bolting to the radio.

“Sorry! Sorry,” she waves away his glare. “But I heard a ‘Martin’! I think this is it!”

Tim perks up. Jon sighs, resigning to the fact that none of his team will be able to work for the time being. He moves over to the half-rebuilt satellite communicator and shoos Tim out of the way.

“It’s as good a time for your breaks as any,” Jon says, but Tim isn’t listening, already halfway to the radio. Not that he needs to get any closer: Sasha’s already doubled the volume and keeps cranking the knob until the voice is impossible to ignore.

> **CECIL:** If you’ll remember, a few weeks back, I mentioned that we were going to be receiving some _visitors._ Specifically: an old friend of Carlos’s, from his time in _university!_ Well, for those who haven’t met them yet, I’m proud to announce that Martin and his team from the Magnus Institute arrived just the other day!

Looks like there’d be no avoiding it. He dedicates as much of his attention to his work as he can.

> **CECIL:** Dear listeners, I’m happy to welcome Martin Blackwood to the studio today. Hello, Martin!
> 
> **MARTIN:** (distant and muffled) Oh— hello! Is it—

Jon grimaces.

> **CECIL:** You’re a little hard to hear there, Martin. I think you need to get closer to the microphone.
> 
> **MARTIN:** (still distant) Oh! Uh, I’m sorry, I—
> 
> **MARTIN:** (clearly) Sorry about that. How’s this, then?
> 
> **CECIL:** All-clear.
> 
> **MARTIN:** Right. Hello, uh… everyone?

“There he is!” Sasha jumps up and down, holding Tim’s elbow as she does. “There’s Martin!”

“The microphone takes a bit of getting used to,” Carlos says. He’s still at the table where he’d been preparing the first dozen or so sensors. At least, if he insists on keeping the radio on, he knows how to work through the broadcast, unlike _some._ “I remember my first time in the booth. It’s not like a normal conversation, with the feeling of the whole of Night Vale listening in. I’ve, uh… Cecil and I talk a lot about what should go on his show.”

> **CECIL:** Hello, Martin. How’s your day been?
> 
> **MARTIN:** Well enough, I suppose. Yours?
> 
> **CECIL:** It’s been the work-approved levels of excellent! Thank you for asking. How’re you settling in?
> 
> **MARTIN:** Oh, uh, well it’s— definitely takes some getting used to?
> 
> **CECIL:** Driving on the right?
> 
> **MARTIN:** I meant more the… things like the great screaming chasms that open up in the ground? And the dew full of ash. And th— y’know what, yes, I would also say “driving on the wrong side,” but… but please understand that back in London it’s because we drive… on _top_ of the asphalt? I’m not even sure—
> 
> **CECIL:** (laughing) Difference of preference, I suppose. I also remember having to learn a new temperature system when I went to Europe. I imagine the shift from celsius to kelvinheit hasn’t been easy.

Jon grimaces. Can Martin please _focus?_ The whole point of him wasting time going on the radio show was to explain why they’re here to the townspeople. If he’d wanted idle chatter, he could be back _here,_ helping them set up the field equipment.

> **CECIL:** The important thing is, you’re here now, right?
> 
> **MARTIN:** Y— Well, yes! Though, I’ll be honest, I thought Tim would be better for your show. N— Not because I didn’t want— Oh, that came out wrong, I really am very happy to be here, i— it’s just that Tim, he, he, he has a much better go about talking with people, but they, that is to say Jon and Sasha, they really needed his help with heavy lifting and, y’know, setting up the equipment. I— I’d just get in the way, so…
> 
> **CECIL:** Well, _I’m_ certainly happy to have you here.
> 
> **MARTIN:** (surprised) Oh— uh! Thank you!
> 
> **CECIL:** Any time. Now, I was hoping you could share with me and the people of Night Vale what it is, exactly, that’s brought you the entire hop, skip, and terminal velocity plummet over to our little town.
> 
> **MARTIN:** Oh, of— of course! We’re here to study uh… the sp— the uh… str...aaaaaange? Um… supernatural! The supernatural events that… happen. Around here.

Jon can’t help a long-suffering sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose. If the others hear, they certainly make no note of it.

> **CECIL:** Any specific events you’re on the lookout for?
> 
> **MARTIN:** Um… not sure yet! We, uh… we… this is going to sound a little— well— Our boss, Elias… sent us here because there’s this… entity? Well, more than one, so… I guess I should say there ARE entities… which have the power to, uh… he, that is Elias, he said they can draw on humanity’s universal fears. And we have a reason to believe that Night Vale is… special. That it has a— a deeper connection with these… entities… than the rest of the world. We don’t know why! So they’re, uh— that is, WE’RE— we’re trying to see if we can’t… find… what that might be, like an… origin point. But— but we don’t… k— know, yet. What that might look like.

Jon takes a break from assembly to shake his head with a small sigh. Tim hisses through his teeth, and Sasha smacks him on the shoulder.

“You could explain the mission statement better?” she asks. “In a way that makes sense to your average _dear listener?”_

Carlos huffs a laugh. “I give him full marks for even bothering to try to explain. I usually just say ‘science’ and leave it there.”

“That’s not very scientific of you,” Sasha teases over one of Cecil’s follow-up questions.

“It absolutely is! I’m focusing on written reports and not—”

Tim shushes both of them. “I can’t hear!”

> **MARTIN:** Personally, I prefer documentaries? But any reality show’s the same.

Of _course_ he’s going on about television. Leave it to Martin to get off-track. They’re here to potentially find a concentration of fear entities—quite possibly their _point of origin—_ but here Martin is, going on about reality television.

> **CECIL:** And how do they compare?
> 
> **MARTIN:** Quite honestly? We’ve found at the institute that real supernatural happenings just… don’t show up on digital recordings? We started using tape recorders at the archives because even the statements people gave wouldn’t record right, and that’s a secondhand account! So anything—documentary or reality show—that shows a blurry image and pretends it’s a… a ghost or something? Probably bollocks. Great fun! But bollocks.

Hm. That’s a pleasant surprise: it was relevant after all.

> **CECIL:** So you study these things at the Institute?
> 
> **MARTIN:** In… well, yes! But not— usually not me, personally, this is kind of a, uh… a special case? The Institute’s director, he, he personally assigned this to us.
> 
> **CECIL:** Interesting! How’d he pick Night Vale?
> 
> **MARTIN:** I, uh… honestly couldn’t say? I didn’t even know that a team was being sent out from the Institute until the day, uh… until the day I messaged Carlos, actually!

Jon scowls. It wasn’t supposed to be a team. It wasn’t even supposed to be _field work._ All he’d done was argue with Elias that Martin be given some paid vacation for some respite after the whole business with Jane Prentiss holing him up in his flat. Then Elias had suddenly tilted his head.

_“Alright,”_ he’d said slowly, thoughtfully. _“Give me until tomorrow to consider it. I’ll have your answer then.”_

But when Jon had come back, it was to pre-made arrangements for the four of them to fly to the _states_ and Elias with that _look_ on his face that meant Jon had no place to argue. _“I’ve been meaning to send a crew to a town named Night Vale for some time,”_ he said. _“This provides an excellent opportunity,”_ he said.

_“What did you think I would say?”_ Elias had asked.

_“No.”_

Elias had hummed. _“Quite. Well, I do think a trip might be helpful—for all of you—until the matter is settled. And it won’t be as though you won’t be working.”_

So, despite the fact that Jon had _no_ fond memories of his time working in research and still had more than his fair share of work to do at the archives, he and his assistants found themselves on a plane to some small town in America that Jon had never heard of.

> **CECIL:** Speaking of, how did you meet our dear Carlos?
> 
> **MARTIN:** Oh, I’m, I’m afraid that isn’t a very exciting story. He, uh… He was studying abroad in London—where I… obviously where I live—and he stayed in a students’ complex near my— my mother and my’s flat! I’d catch him between classes, or, or he’d catch me looking for the right key, and we’d strike up a little conversation. And then he’d get to talking about his studies, and, and— well, you know him! He… what he does is so… so _cool._ It’s hard NOT to keep asking about every little piece of the— of the… science?
> 
> **CECIL:** It’s fascinating stuff, isn’t it? He gets so hypnotizing!
> 
> **MARTIN:** Yes— Yes, exactly! Especially when he’s— he has all those machines, right, and he’s— he’s—

Jon rolls his eyes.

> **CECIL:** Talking about how they work?
> 
> **MARTIN:** With the dials!
> 
> **CECIL:** It’s more about switches lately, actually.
> 
> **MARTIN:** Oh is it now?
> 
> **CECIL:** Can’t forget the lights!
> 
> **MARTIN:** Lights, too? (laughing) I suppose I have quite a bit to catch up on, then!

“Sounds like they got your number, chief,” Tim yells over his shoulder.

“I should hope Cecil does, at least.” Carlos chuckles.

> **MARTIN:** Sorry I didn’t have anything more, uh… a more exciting story to tell you.

Jon squares his chin and does his best to actually _work_ in their new workplace. He’ll have to remember to write this incident down to put on Tim and Sasha’s progress reports.

This device, specifically, is very important. The satellites will be able to keep track of the passage of time on the different sensors Carlos is working on, which they’ve brought to place in the field. They’ve been told that temporal distortion increases the closer they’ll get to the point of interest, so this machine should be able to help them triangulate— or at the very least narrow down—the areas they’ll need to focus on.

Jon picks up a socket wrench to fasten the base exterior-right panel to its frame. It’s a tricky task—holding it still with one hand while also trying to brace so he can use the wrench with the other. The panel tilts, and Jon grits his teeth.

“I’m surprised he remembers all that, actually,” Carlos says, and Jon startles to hear Carlos’s voice right next to him. Carlos kneels beside Jon, taking the casing and lining it up for him.

“When was the last time you and Martin saw each other?” Sasha asks.

“It’s— ah… complicated.”

> **CECIL:** What do you mean ‘not exciting’? I’m fascinated in hearing what Carlos was like before I met him, and I’m sure our listeners are equally as interested.

Carlos clicks his tongue and shakes his head.

> **MARTIN:** Oh, uh— yeah? Y’think so?
> 
> **CECIL:** I know so.
> 
> **MARTIN:** Well, I— there’s not much else I can tell you, unfortunately. He left after a semester, and other than the brief post on Facebook, we haven’t kept in close touch.
> 
> **CECIL:** But now’s a good chance to reconnect.
> 
> **MARTIN:** Yes, I… I hope so. And to learn about what he’s been up to, of course.
> 
> **CECIL:** Which is one of the reasons Carlos had the great idea to put you on the show!
> 
> **MARTIN:** Yes! Well— well, one of us researchers, that is. Could’ve been any of us, and like I said, Tim really would’ve—
> 
> **CECIL:** I’d like to learn more about you, Martin!
> 
> **MARTIN:** H— What, m— me?
> 
> **CECIL:** Yes, you of course! You’re an old friend of Carlos’s! And you know what they say: a friend of Carlos’s is a stranger, at best, of mine. But not for long!
> 
> **MARTIN:** Is— Is that what they say?
> 
> **CECIL:** So what’s your type?

Tim bursts into a bark of a laugh. Carlos chuckles over Martin’s sputtering. “Here we go.”

“Here we go?” Sasha prompts.

“He likes to fluster his guests as a little prank. Nothing too bad, of course, but enough to notice.”

Tim barks a laugh. “My kind of guy.”

“If you two are finished,” Jon starts, “it sounds like the work-related aspects of the interview are through.”

Tim gives a put-upon sigh. “Guess break time’s over.” He stretches, cracking his back.

“It was fun while it lasted.” Sasha pushes off a counter, and her roller chair propels across the room towards her laptop. She comes up short and has to drag herself the rest of the way.

“You can still hear the end of the show,” Carlos offers. “I was planning on leaving it on anyway.”

Jon is nothing if not a grateful guest. He is very careful to hold back his distaste at the suggestion. He relinquishes reassembly back to Tim, who’d been handling the job much better anyway, and goes to take up Carlos’s old post at the sensors.

If Jon thinks hard enough, he won’t have to hear the inane drivel of what radio hosts consider “entertainment”.

Their work is cut out for them, but Jon enjoys the simple monotony in an odd way. Unfortunately, it means that it’s harder to keep from focusing on the radio when he hears his name.

> **CECIL:** Anything our listeners can do to help Jon, Tim, and Sasha?

“We’re famous, guys,” Tim deadpans. Carlos snorts.

“You’ll get used to it,” he says.

> **MARTIN:** Well, the first sign is places where time feels… wrong? Anywhere that digital devices don’t work at all is also a good cue. As well as a… general sense of— of unease, I suppose.

Sasha groans. “Why would he go and say that? We are gonna get _so many_ basement calls now.”

Jon closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and focuses again. He has work to do. There is always work to be done.

* * *

There is a truth there—to the official story of Night Vale’s founding, that time feels “wrong” around It—but unsurprisingly, they are also lies. When does a person “start”: their birth or their first memory? Night Vale’s unique features did not spring into existence after white men named it in 1745, nor did they manifest after the first recorded instance of mangled figures with sagging skin dripping that name into the sand with their blood, also in 1745.

In some ways, the being humans call “Night Vale” has always been there. In humanity’s reality, though, Its presence depends on more complicated forms of life, so in other ways, “Night Vale” budded at some point along the evolution of multicellular organisms. It is a growing presence, sprouting limbs as humanity learns new things they have to fear, up to and including fear itself.

It cannot be said to be “present” in humanity’s reality in the way most humans might claim It is. The traces of It they find are more akin to the evidence of stolen property found amongst a pawn shop: a silver frame with a damaged backing meant to hold the picture in place, a well-loved toy missing all of its attachments but still with a tag, an expensive instrument with an “If found return to” sticker poorly scratched off its case. It has no power to reach out of Its universe into humanity’s to reclaim Its property, and so they continue as living proof of a being not truly alive.

But It can reach Night Vale, and evidence of It is everywhere, so long as one knows which everywhere to look.

* * *

As a being, most of It isn’t capable of judgement in ways humans might recognize. That being said, Its presence looms large in Carlos’s labs, even the remote ones. It likes the labs, so Night Vale’s citizens avoid them when possible.

The four outsiders can’t see It, obviously. They're outsiders, but more than that they’re human. Carlos can’t see It either for the same reasons, but this distinction is important, in some way. Important to Its Voice, perhaps.

But Cecil is performing his duties as the Voice, and Carlos is working in his office at the moment, leaving the bullpen to the quartet of newcomers.

Jonathan Sims is already weathered for his age. Some of it is in his dress: the houndstooth jackets with leather patches on the elbows and the vests with pocket protectors and the chains connecting a pocketwatch and his reading glasses and his wallet to him. At the same time, It doesn’t need to be an omnipresent being of knowledge to see the traces of stress-aging on his person. There are streaks of gray in his dark hair and frown lines permanently crease the space between his eyebrows. There are freckles along the back of his neck, speaking of a childhood spent with his head down and facing away from the sun. Jon is not a man known for taking care of himself, and he carries this fact in the bags under his eyes and the lighter patches of flaky skin around the creases of his joints where lotion should be applied.

There’s something odd, for most of It, to think of Itself in seperate parts the way humans do, but Its Eye can’t help but categorize. Jon is marked by the Web and holds a curiosity which the Eye appreciates. He’s already well on his way as an Archivist.

Jon stands and clears his throat for his assistants’ attention.

“Tim,” he reads off of the itinerary he wrote, “I need you to prioritize placing the sensors now that we have our first batch ready.” He picks up a canvas bag and holds them in Tim’s direction, despite the fact that Tim is at least a couple meters across the room from him. “One in the square, for comparison, and the others around the perimeter of town. There’s a GPS with the coordinates ready for you in the bag.”

Jon makes no move to bring it any closer. He shakes it impatiently. Tim makes eye-contact with Sasha before standing up and striding across the room to Jon.

Timothy Stoker bears a striking similarity to his brother. At this point, It has known Danny Stoker’s ins-and-outs for roughly four years, making Tim more notable in the places where he differs from the precedent. Where Danny carried muscles built from a careful, well-rounded regimen, Tim’s cord with natural use. Tim makes a dance of his movements, leading with a hand, his hips, a shoulder, a flip of his head. Danny has not danced in some time and won’t be dancing again for quite a bit longer, yet he walked solidly—chin high and hands always hooked into his pockets or belt loops. Both brothers keep their brown hair clipped short, but Tim’s sports a cowlick which springs straight out from behind his pierced ear. Tim’s left cheek dimples when he smiles, encouraging him to smirk instead, and freckles generously sprinkle his skin from a chronic impatience with the process of sunscreen.

“So,” Tim starts, opening the bag to peek inside, “am I running them through some kind of opening act or are they ready for the main event already?” Ever the performer, ironically.

“There’s some initial sequences for them,” Sasha says.

“Which brings me to my next point.” Jon turns to Sasha. “I’ll need you to coordinate with Tim to make sure they connect properly to the software and get labelled correctly before their data are mixed up.”

Surrounded by her coworkers, Sasha James is markedly similar to a lighthouse. She stands taller than any coworker and her bright eyes, magnified by her circular glasses which always seem to carry fingerprints on the lenses, emphasize the bright and perceptive nature of her expressions. She keeps her long hair tied away from her face with a handkerchief, which she coordinates with the rest of her outfit. Rosacea flares across her cheek and chin, but she’s long since past the point of actively worrying about it.

Sasha flashes Jon a thumbs up. “Got it!”

Jon is the picture of professional efficiency, but much like every photo, there’s a deeper context in his shapes. His relief when Sasha recognizes what he’s asking—despite his own lackluster understanding—leaks off the drop of his shoulders, and It drinks in these details. It laments how quickly the relief passes.

“Martin,” Jon says, and even though Martin was the only one left who needed his job assignment, Martin still straightens like the tone of Jon’s voice scared him.

Martin is something of a special case. Not in his appearance—he looks like every other human It’s ever seen—but in the amount of fear he carries, in the amount of thoughts that constantly cross his mind. He could serve as a vessel for quite a few of Its parts: Web, Buried, Stranger, Eye, Desolation, Lonely—especially Lonely—and even a spot of Dark in the way his first instinct is to not look at his own problems. He sits slouched, his sun bleached black hair hiding the curve of his cheeks and his downcast and quick-moving eyes. His wireless frame glasses have had a large crack in one corner for over a year.

When It looks at Martin, It sees quite a bit of potential past the Corruption. It will have to keep a close Eye on his progress.

“Y— yes?” Martin asks.

“You’ve already built a bit of a reputation with the townspeople here.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say—” Martin clamps his mouth shut, then decides against silence, “it was one radio thing. I doubt anyone even heard… or that it had any real effect on anyone’s opinion of an outsider.”

“Nevertheless,” Jon brushes the words off like dust on his suit: with a grimace, “I’d like for you to do a bit of asking around about Night Vale’s history. See if you can find any good places for us to begin looking for this point of interest.”

“Anything specific?” he asks.

“Founding stories, but especially those that deal with the entities’ appearances. Night Vale is deeply mired with the supernatural to an unprecedented extent. I doubt this happened anytime recently. If we can find when these events began, we might have a good lead for where they came from as well.”

Martin nods.

“Good,” Jon says. “I’ll leave you lot to it.”

“What’re you doing?” Sasha asks.

“We left quite a bit of work behind us at the Institute. Elias is lining up temporary replacements, so I’m writing up training documents to instruct them on the new organizational system.”

“You can take the archivist out of the archives, but you can’t quite take the archives out of the archivist, huh?” Tim asks, sharing a grin with Sasha. 

Tim does not realize the truth to his words, but most people don’t.

Jon hums the note of his frown. “Quite.” He turns from the two, disengaging from whatever other attempts at bonding they aim to throw at him. He misconstrues their efforts as slacking off at best and possible insubordination at worst. They have long since realized he’s serious.

Martin holds back the urge to click at his pen. He stands from his desk and approaches Jon’s workspace, being careful to keep the table between them.

“Um, excuse me,” he starts, and Jon looks up. “I was thinking… would it be okay if I asked Cecil to announce the, uh… that we’re looking for stories on the air? It would be more efficient than me going door-to-door, and he probably knows a lot as well, so I’d just end up asking him along the line anyway.”

Martin’s instincts are sharp, It notes. Barely three days in town, and he knows the purpose and reliability of Its Voice.

“I don’t care how you do it, Martin,” Jon says, already turning his attention back to his work. “Just let me know about any developments. And don’t give out the lab’s phone. I won’t have it ringing at all hours of the day because every community radio fan thinks we simply must hear about how their family is the epitome of the American Dream.”

Martin shrinks back. “Right,” he says, stepping away. “Right, sorry.”

He moves back to his desk.

It watches Martin type and delete three separate emails to Its Voice. Martin checks his watch and stands, deciding that now is as good a time as any for tea.

His devotion to an Eye… another note to be considered. For now, though, It returns Its attention to the Archivist-to-be.

* * *

Jon and Carlos are often the last people left in the lab: Jon poring over numbers and statistics and satellite projections, Carlos doing whatever brand of experiment it is he does in his office. It’s not Jon’s priority.

After many a late night at the archives, it’s… nice to have another presence with him as the lights through the windows dim and they resort to the fluorescents. To hear the white noise of clicks and whirrs and footsteps muffled through a door instead of the creaking of an old building settling in its foundation, followed by silence.

Except every day, at about seven, in the very likely scenario that Carlos is still working, a horn will honk from outside. And on the off-chance that he isn’t in his office, Jon will see from the corner of his eye as Carlos jolts, blinks, and then checks his watch.

He’ll say some variation of “Looks like time got away from me there.” Then, he waves through the window to show that he heard the car horn before quickly moving about the lab to gather his things.

“Do you want Cecil and I to drop you off somewhere?” he’ll ask on the way out.

“I’m quite alright,” Jon will say.

“Okay, if you’re sure. Goodnight, Jon!”

Jon will hum in reply.

And then it’s back to the familiar: him working by himself. There is always work to be done. The only difference between these last few hours in the lab and those at the archives is that Jon flails to reactivate the motion-sensor lights every thirty minutes.

The first thing Jon does after Carlos leaves is turn the radio off.

* * *

These details—of the founding of Night Vale, of the daily mundanities of an Archivist-to-be—though quite important, only truly matter to one sliver of “Night Vale”. For the others, there are two key points:

  1. In all ways, It has always watched over Night Vale, and It always will. 
    * The pronoun “It” does not fully capture It. “I” does not work, because it implies separation from “you”. “We” is closer, but implies a plural. There is only one It, it’s just that It is larger than even Itself can comprehend.
  2. Night Vale may never truly change in any significant way, but “Night Vale” is always expanding and always will. If the helicopters were to look down, they would see an eye. If it were legal for citizens to look straight up, they would see spirals in the stars.




	2. If I Could Tell Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Right when their investigation is starting to lead somewhere, a dust storm wracks its way across Night Vale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In surveys, when asked to describe police sirens in one word, the average citizen said “calming.” When asked to describe them in two words, the average citizen said “not calming.” Larger data collection sizes are strongly related to accuracy. Welcome to Night Vale.

Nilanjala “Nils” Sikdar has been keeping busy since she and the other researchers killed the giant man-eating centipede the Joyful Congregation used to call its “Smiling God”.

Her experiments have been going well. Hm… _had_ been going well, up until the drone storm took down the research lab. Usually, when that happens, she’d just move to the remote lab, but Carlos had already offered the space to some out of town researchers. She and her cohort had been forced into a sabbatical, and Nils is taking it the worst of the three of them.

Which isn’t to say she’s taking it _bad,_ just… she likes what she does. Her research into antibiotics could help a lot of people, and she has to make up the progress she lost after the main lab was flattened.

She tries to keep busy with literature search, but all that does is give her more ideas which makes her more antsy to get back to work.

She’s been glancing at her cell phone the whole time. She finally gets the call while she’s sitting at the kitchen table, pursuing a new avenue to look into.

On the first ring of Carlos’s call, Nils wipes her phone down with a disinfectant wipe. She accepts the call on the second ring.

“Nils!” Carlos starts. “How’re you holding up?”

“Hello, sir. I’ve been fine. Yourself?”

“I have good news! They’ve finally got the main lab up and running again.”

Nils breathes a sigh of relief. “That certainly is good news.”

Carlos hums on the other end. “I’m calling to let you know that regular work hours start again not this upcoming Monday, but the Monday after.”

Nils purses her lips to keep herself from groaning. “Next Monday?”

“Yeah. I figured you were all being told on such short notice that it’s only fair I give another week off before you’re officially AWOL, so to speak.”

“Will the lab be closed up until then?”

“No, I’ll be helping set the stations back up. Were you hoping to come in?”

“If I could.”

There’s a chuckle.

“You missed research that much, huh?” he asks.

“I have a lot of catching up to do.” She plays with the edges of the book on microbes she’d been reading. “And some new avenues I’m really excited about.”

Carlos huffs a light laugh. “I don’t know what I was expecting. Clock the hours you spend ‘catching up’, and I’ll make sure you get overtime pay. Keep up the good work, just make sure you take it easy too, okay?”

“I will. Thank you, sir.” She drums her fingers on the cover of her book. “Is that all?”

“Yep! Have a wonderful rest of your night, Nils.”

“You too, sir. Goodnight.”

She’s overflowing with excitement before she finishes standing from the table.

The time off has given her some great ideas about natural resource management via microbes. She has a lot of planning to do before she can get back to proper research.

Nils pulls her chair back from her writing desk (lining the legs up so the sides are flush with the corners of the hardwood panels on the floor), pulls out a fresh sheet of grid paper, and begins writing her new research proposal.

* * *

The main building’s reconstruction finishes up, and Carlos moves back there, giving the Magnus crew full control of the remote lab space. He gives Jon the key to the office. The lock’s an awkward thing: there’s no knob for it on the inside. It locks and unlocks with the key or it doesn’t lock—or unlock—at all.

But just because Carlos works back in the main lab doesn’t mean he doesn’t visit them, apparently. Often. Right now, for example, he and Martin chat over tea.

Their tones are hushed, but Sasha’s frustration is loud enough to fill the room.

“The readings aren’t even consistent.” Sasha huffs, tapping her pen against the sensor readouts in front of her. “One second, they’ll be normal seconds, but four seconds later, they’re five seconds faster, and one second after _that_ they’re twelve seconds behind! Like they’ve skipped back!”

“You have to use a different frame of reference than ‘seconds’,” Tim says. “What about ‘point’? Point A and point B and what not?”

“Well, there’s not much we can do at the moment anyway,” Jon says. He only left his office to use the water closet, but Sasha called him over to talk about her progress on the way back. He’s been stuck standing here for three minutes. “Not enough data for an acceptable power level. We’ll see what the analysis says at the end of the week.”

Tim groans.

“We don’t have enough data yet,” Jon explains. “With a larger sample—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know _why._ Doesn’t mean I have to _like_ it.”

Jon grimaces.

“Getting a bit tired of everyone’s family albums, are you?” Sasha teases.

“It’s just starting to feel like a wild goose chase.” Tim kicks his feet up on the table. Jon scowls. “Half the stories are word-for-word carbon copies of each other, and the other half don’t even make sense.”

“Yes, well, welcome to Night Vale,” Jon mutters under his breath. Then, addressing the others: “So I take it you _haven’t_ made any progress on possible leads.”

“Of course I have.” Tim pushes his hand through his hair, overexaggerating a sultry grin. “I’m a professional, after all.”

“If I can get back to the point I was _trying_ to make,” Sasha says, poking Tim in the bicep, “I think we’re going to need sensors further out from the town proper. They’re inconsistent temporally, yes, but even without a large enough data store, they look like they’re going to be consistent cross-sectionally. I think it’d be good to get a head start on a wider reach.”

Jon hums. “That’s not a bad idea.” Worst-case scenario they don’t work either and they have to place more again or figure out a new strategy. “We could concentrate on areas that come up often in the townfolk’s stories.”

“Good luck with that.” Tim flips a pencil around his fingers. “Like I said, it’s just been a goose chase on my end.”

Jon’s eyes narrow. “You said you had leads.”

“I said I had _progress_ on _possible_ leads.” He flourishes his pencil. “Big difference.”

“I—” Martin starts up from his desk, “I might have a few places we can start from?” Jon looks at him, and Martin’s voice stalls. He glances at Carlos, who nods encouragingly. Carlos must have convinced him to speak up at all. “I, uh… the actual canvassing wasn’t… the _most_ helpful? So I took the liberty to contact the historical society—deadend, apparently it’s a cult—but they let slip that a resident named Old Woman Josie might be able to tell more about Night Vale’s founding.” He wrings his sleeves. “So I did some research into her—she’s passed, God bless her—but I found her house. It— it’s on the edge of town, and…” Martin looks down at his desk. “It’s hard to describe, really, but it’s sort of got a— a halo?”

Jon’s chin tilts to look at Martin from over the rim of his glasses. Martin’s shoulders hike up to his chin. He seems serious. 

“A halo.”

“Y— yes.”

“And you didn’t think to investigate.” Jon doesn’t bother phrasing it like a question.

“Of course I… _thought_ to investigate?”

“Martin.”

“I, uh… I wanted to report back before I went! Just— Just in case you or the others wanted any— had anything you wanted me to ask about, or if you had any different ideas? I thought you might like to—”

“You don’t need me to micromanage every lead you find.”

“Hey,” Tim starts, but Martin cuts him off.

“I— I know! I know. It just seems a bit…” Martin’s sleeves must get stretched out incredibly quickly if the way he’s currently handling them is more than just a fleeting affectation, “too easy of a target? We haven’t been finding much of anything useful, but— but then out of the blue there’s just a… giant halo spanning the entire house of a woman who claimed she lived with angels.”

“I’m— Sorry, she what?” Jon’s brow furrows, and he crosses his arms.

“A— angels? She said she, um… lived. With them. They lived with her.”

“She did live with them,” Carlos says. “It was a big thing.”

“And you neglected to mention this before because…”

“I don’t think I neglected to mention it. That seems a very important detail, I don’t— I don’t think I’d just leave it—”

_“Martin.”_

“I, I was— I didn’t know if they’d be dangerous!” Martin’s nails dig into the fabric. Carlos reaches for his shoulder, but Martin shakes his head. “I… wanted to check in before I investigated in case they were.”

Jon can feel Tim and Sasha glaring at him, but this is a _workplace,_ damn it. If Martin was having an issue, he should’ve brought it up before. Jon can’t help with something he doesn’t know about.

“Do these ‘angels’ seem like a threat?”

“Not— not the ones I’ve met? But they aren’t the, uh, the kind you paint in nurseries, I’ll tell you that.”

“If I may?” Carlos asks.

“Please.” Jon nods.

“They’re reasonably intimidating. I can’t see them myself, but from Cecil’s description, I can see why one would be apprehensive to approach them. That being said,” Carlos turns to Martin, and his voice softens, “they’ve been wonderful friends and valuable townspeople.”

“But you can’t judge all of them from how they interact with the community, since we’re ‘outsiders’,” Jon says.

Carlos nods. “That’s a rational precaution, yes.”

“I’ll—” Martin swallows. “I’ll try to be careful, then—”

“You don’t have to do anything until after the weekend,” Sasha says.

Jon nods. “Exactly.”

“He could go with Tim while he’s placing the new sensors, instead,” Carlos offers.

“That wouldn’t be any less dangerous,” Tim says. “The further out you go from Night Vale, the worse the spooky shit gets. You know that.”

“Of course I do. All the more reason to take him with you.”

 _“Martin?”_ Jon blurts.

“No offense, I’m sure,” Sasha says. Then, to Carlos: “But it sounds like there’s a story there.”

“No story. I just figured if he brought a gun, he could scare—”

“A _what?”_ There’s a crash from behind Jon. Tim’s standing, his chair tipped over.

“I’m _sorry?”_ Martin asks, voice squeaky. “If I brought _what?”_

Carlos’s brows furrow as he looks at Martin.

“Your gun. Why else would you have a license?”

“I have a—” Martin swallows. “A gun license?”

“No he does not,” Sasha says, but there’s an excited laugh bubbling in her voice. “Carlos—”

“He’s not even an American citizen,” Jon says. “How would he have a license to carry a firearm?”

The crease between Carlos’s brows deepens, and he points to the makeshift kitchen space. “How else would he have that?”

The archive staff look where he’s pointing. All they see is Martin’s kettle on the counter.

“Have what?” Sasha asks.

“The, uh—” Carlos stands and walks over, gesturing at what he means. It’s just the kettle again. “I forget the name.”

“The kettle?”

“Kettle! Thank you.”

“What about the kettle?” Jon asks, patience thinning.

“You… you all know that these are legally firearms in Night Vale, right?”

They all stare at him.

“You have to have a gun license to have one.”

Their heads all turn to Martin.

Martin looks like he’s about to throw up.

Carlos pieces it together. He walks over and pats Martin’s shoulder. “Sorry to bring it up. Don’t worry, my lips are sealed. God knows what laws I’ve had to break in the name of science.”

“Okay that’s _definitely_ a story,” Sasha cuts in.

“Over lunch?”

“I’ll get my coat!”

Jon stays behind. He has work to do, but more than that, he gets the feeling that he’s not invited. It’s much easier to focus in the lab when he’s the only one there. Lots of quiet.

But that’s fine. There is always work to be done.

* * *

Jon comes in on Saturday.

He finishes typing up the instructions for the archive’s filing system—date of statement, case number, name, date of incident, entity type—and realizes, as his laptop crashes seconds after, that he can’t remember the last time he saved.

He doesn’t have the energy left to be mad. A look at the clock tells him he’s earned six hours’ worth of overtime already.

“I’ll see what it manages to recover,” he tells the empty room, “and I’ll come in tomorrow for damage control.”

It clicks the tape recorder next to him to acknowledge that It’s caught that. He doesn’t notice. Instead, he mutters under his breath, “It’s not like I had Sunday plans anyway.”

* * *

Martin’s flat in Night Vale is nice enough. Carlos helped Martin get a place in the building where Carlos lived before moving in with Cecil. It’s certainly not home, but…

Well, truth be told, Martin’s still sorting out his feelings about his flat back in London.

He only really needs it to satisfy his few home routines, anyway. He can watch movies on the telly, he has internet access, and he can heat up his ready-made meals. There wasn’t a kettle, but thankfully he’s brought his own from home. He hadn’t been able to find an electric kettle anywhere else around town (and only recently realized why that’d been), so he’s resorted to bringing it between his flat and the lab.

Tim laughed at him for packing it in the first place, but Martin can’t help but feel smug when Tim complains that the only time he can get a decent cup of tea is at work.

Another bonus: the shower has plenty of hot water. His post-shower skin glows with residual warmth and the feeling of being clean. 

Right now, he’s standing in his kitchen, kettle heating up. He’s preparing for his nightly ritual of settling in on the couch with a cup of non-caffeinated tea and queuing up the next episode of some reality show he’s recently taken to called “Jim Henson’s Creature Creator.” Back in London, he’d do this near every night for months at a time (with different shows and movies, obviously), but he actually gets out a bit more often in Night Vale than he’d done back home. Cecil invites him to different sight-seeing spots at least once a week, and he often joins him and his family for dinner afterwards. Tim likes going about town too, but he doesn’t like to explore alone, and with the bullpen-style setup they have here, Martin’s often caught on the tail-end of his invitations to Sasha.

The radio plays a quite lovely song about rain. Martin sings along with the words he can manage to predict from the easy rhyming pattern. His kettle beeps, and Martin carefully tilts it to pour.

He jumps and nearly splashes the boiling water on himself when a crackling noise interrupts his easy-listening music.

> **CECIL:** Attention, residents of Night Vale.

Martin frowns. Night Vale Community Radio’s been over for hours. What’s Cecil doing in the booth?

> **CECIL:** A sudden, heretofore unscheduled, dust storm is expected to hit Night Vale in the next few minutes.

Martin looks up from his cup. He frowns.

> **CECIL:** This is not a test. Because it’s not scheduled, I can’t say what type of social, military, and/or existential experiment City Council will be conducting in the meantime. Better safe than sorry, citizens! I urge all Night Vale residents to remain calm and proceed to their nearest dust shelter in a timely manner. This is not a drill; it is an alert.

Martin’s nerves light up. Okay, Martin. Stay calm. First and foremost: he needs to find the nearest shelter. There are maps posted around the door with all types of emergency information. Martin had thought it was wallpaper at first glance.

Before he finishes crossing his kitchen, Martin’s phone gets two messages. Sasha says: “Find a shelter. Cecil says there’s going to be trouble.” Tim says: “Oh shit, did you hear the news?”

He sends both of them a “stay safe” and pockets his phone.

He finds the map to the dust/bomb shelter easier than he’d expected, considering the number of maps pasted up. Take a right, go down the street, and under the Museum of Reenactment.

The radio’s quiet—NVCR apparently having knocked out the music station’s signal. Martin bundles his jacket a little closer to himself and grabs his keys. Once he’s in the shelter, he’ll have to text Carlos and Jon and Sasha and Tim that he’s safe. He wonders if there’ll be signal at their shelters. Maybe one or more of them will be under the Museum of Reenactment with him? He doesn’t know where they are—well, okay, Jon’s probably—

Jon’s probably at the lab. The lab full of _windows._ Where he keeps the radio off.

“Oh Lord,” Martin says, jolting back.

Okay, stay calm. Will there be a map to the shelter at the lab? Martin can’t remember, and he doesn’t want to waste time looking.

He knows someone who might be able to help, though.

Martin digs his phone back out and dials Carlos’s number.

“Martin?” Carlos starts. “Is everything okay?”

“Where’s the closest shelter to the lab?” Martin asks.

“The lab? Didn’t you hear that there’s a storm coming? Why are you at the lab?”

“Oh, I’m not yet. I’m going to get Jon.”

“What? Where’s Jon?” There’s a brief pause. “Oh n— _still?_ It’s Sunday!”

“Yes, well. That’s how he is.”

“He didn’t hear the radio?”

“Jon doesn’t keep the radio on when he’s in the lab by himself.”

“Oh! Oh, that’s worrying. Okay, do you need us to get him?”

“No, I’m already on my way, and my flat’s closer than your house. I just need to know where to go from there.”

“Oh! That’s easy. You can both shelter-in-place in the basement.”

“The— the lab has a basement?”

“Of course! You’ve seen what happens around here. Why wouldn’t it?” Martin tilts his head. Fair. “Now, you know science machine number three?”

“The one with the three on it?”

“Yes, that one!”

God, Martin really wishes all science were like Night Vale science.

“It has a keypad. Type one-two-one-five-two-zero-one-six on it, and the stairs to the basement will open. The foundation’s lined with lead, so you—”

“Um,” Martin scrambles for a pen and his notepad. “Repeat the numbers?”

“12-15-2016. It’s my wedding anniversary in American date notation. Month, day, then year.”

“Got it.” He rips the note off the pad and shoves it in his pocket with his wallet. “Anything else?”

“There’s a radio down there, so you’ll know when it’s all-clear.”

“Cecil’s station?”

“Should be set there already.” There’s rustling on the other end. Carlos must be moving and talking, and it reminds Martin to head out himself. “If not, you won’t need the number. It’ll be him if he’s on.”

Martin’s eyes snap to the radio from the door. He knows that entities sometimes possess objects. Could it be— 

No— No time for that. Priorities. Martin locks the door behind him and focuses back in on the call.

“Anything I should know about the basement?”

“It’s a little messy—we use it as a storage space too—but it’s not cramped.” It’s dark outside. The streetlamps are struggling to get their hellish red light out despite the weather and the sand and grit clearly flying through the beams. “There’s a backup generator in every corner, in case the main power supply gets knocked out. The walls are lined with lead, so if the city’s doing something with radiation, you’ll be perfectly safe.” There’s a lion’s roar, out here. Another sound undercuts it: metallic and screeching. The wind and whatever’s in it stings Martin’s cheeks. He can barely hear Carlos anymore. “If you get hungry, there’s a pantry with canned food, but you might have to move some boxes. There’s also a sink in the pantry which connects to an independent water tank than the one the city infrastructure uses.” A boom, and the ground shakes under him. Martin whimpers. He walks faster. “That should be everything. Anything else?”

“Nope, that’s it,” he sounds like he’s about to cry. “Thank you so much, Carlos. I’ll text you when we’re inside.”

“You won’t be able to. No signal. I think it’s the lead that stops it, but that’s not my kind of science.”

Martin tenses. “Okay,” he says.

“Sorry.” There’s shuffling. “I really have to go, though. Stay safe, okay?”

“Thanks again; you too. Tell Emmanuel I said hi.”

There’s a short laugh on the other end before the call terminates.

As soon as he’s hung up, Martin starts running.

* * *

Jon feeds It well, providing a veritable feast of information over the last three hours. Nonstop, even, carefully biting his sandwich away from his desk to keep crumbs from jamming the keys. He’s even using specific statements to show examples of Its different limbs’ traits for categorizing other cases.

The moon is out—though Jon couldn’t see it even if he remembered to try and look—and the Dark is impatient. It’s hungry, and Its stomach rumbles with Devastation. But here, at the lab, It’s the Eye that all but salivates, thrumming with energy in a satisfied purr.

The door to the lab slams open, and Jon shrieks.

“Jon!” the voice is Martin’s, but It sips at his shrill panic.

 _“Jesus,_ Martin.” Jon grabs at his chest. Martin shoulders the door closed behind himself, and It pounds at the thick wood. The storm hasn’t nearly begun, but It roars. “You can’t just go and—”

“You can yell at me later!” Martin runs further inside, towards the machines lining the wall. He counts, checking the sides for a label. Outside, It moves along the perimeter, the tips of Its claws licking across the bricks. “We have to get in the shelter!”

Jon tenses. He is full of fear, much like Martin, and it sparks him into a live wire.

Jon’s senses—only newly dipped by their toes into It—feel Its presence brush against them. Meanwhile, Martin’s found his machine, and he punches numbers into a keypad.

A beep confirms the correct code. Science Machine 3 creaks, sliding along its track to the side.

Outside, It reaches a window.

“There’s an emergency,” Martin rushes to explain. “We’ll be safe in the basement until the storm passes.”

“What is— basement?” Jon asks, not moving. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Carlos told me when I said I was on my way.” It backs away from the window and braces. “He says it’s lined with lead down here, so at least we won’t have to worry about any radiation.”

_“Radiation?”_

He opens his mouth to argue. It throws Itself against the glass. The resulting impact booms, windows rattling.

The Dark is closing in. Behind it: Desolation. The minority of citizens in Night Vale who can feel pain will long since be either sheltered or swallowed.

Jon’s perception of It may be green, but even a newborn zebra knows to run at the sight of a mane.

Martin ushers Jon into the basement and pulls the door shut behind them. Science Machine 3 glides back into place.

Somewhere—everywhere—a dust storm begins to rage.

* * *

“Did Carlos say _where_ this supposed radio is?” Jon asks, leaning to check behind the same boxes he’s already looked behind twice.

Martin did not think through that he would be isolated with Jon for a prolonged, unknown length of time.

It’s not that Martin regrets it _—absolutely_ not—he would do the same for any of his coworkers, and even if he’d realized he’d be stuck with Jon, he’d do it again. He just… really hopes this is over soon. And a small _—small—_ part of himself sort of really, really wishes it were Cecil or Sasha or Carlos or Tim here with him instead.

Jon can just be… unreasonably mean. To Martin, specifically. Jon treats him like he’s daft at best or outright useless at worst. Part of Martin thinks that Jon doesn’t mean it personally, but it’s hard to not take it as such when it’s nearly always directed at him.

It’s not _always_ like that. Jon has brief moments of compassion, like when he’d offered for Martin to stay at the Institute, but a few minutes without clouds doesn’t undo flood damage, especially if it just keeps raining right afterwards.

Oh… was that kind of clever? Martin takes out his phone and makes a note of that line. In his rush, he didn’t bring his composition book, but he might be able to use that in something else later.

“Have you gotten reception, then?” Jon asks, foot tapping. Martin startles.

“Uh, n—” he pockets his phone. “No, sorry.”

Jon hums. “Right. The dust storm hasn’t eroded the lead from the walls, it seems.” He turns away. “Now, unless you have a map to the radio on your phone would you _please_ put that away and help me look?”

He stomps off.

Martin _knows_ that Jon can be sweet—downright thoughtful when he wants to be. It’s just that, when Jon doesn’t want to, he can be a real… well— a douche.

At least he’d said please?

Martin swallows a sigh.

The basement shelter is much… larger than Martin had pictured it? Martin’s tempted to call it a “small warehouse” more than a basement. There’s a large number of crates piled hither and thither, organized into three rows with two pathways leading down the center of them. Despite the floorspace, the ceiling’s low, with the three crate high piles nearly touching it. True to Carlos’s word, Martin certainly won’t get claustrophobic in here anytime soon.

They don’t split up far to search. More like… the way two people might try to find something at the grocer, with one watching the left shelves and the other on the right. Martin takes a peek into an open crate and finds manilla folders packed in like sardines. He’s curious, but he’d rather not chance getting distracted and yelled at again.

Two-thirds of the way down the first row, the silence between them is starting to get to Martin. He promised Jon he’d explain. Does Jon want to find the radio first and hear the story after? Does he mind listening and looking at the same time? Martin could ask, but Jon might give him that _look_ like Martin had the _audacity_ to not already know, but if he waits too long, will Jon snap at him to _hurry up and get to it?_ It’s possible.

It had to be _Jon,_ didn’t it?

“So,” Martin breaks the silence because he always does, “what were…” is it rude to ask his boss why he’s here on the weekend? Shouldn’t it be the other way ‘round?

Jon cuts in before Martin figures out an answer.

“Carlos told you about this basement, did he?” He only turns enough to catch the tilt of Martin’s head in a _yes._ “Right. And you didn’t feel the need to share that information with the rest of us.”

“He only just told me when I called an hour or so ago.”

“I see. And that code was…”

“He told me that too. It’s his and Cecil’s wedding anniversary, apparently.”

Jon’s brows furrow. “He and Cecil are married?”

Martin looks at him.

Jon bristles. “What?”

Martin startles. “N— Nothing! Nothing. Just… “

Jon’s eyes narrow. “Just what?”

“I just thought it was… well, kind of… obvious?”

“How so?”

“Cecil drives him home from work.”

“Carpooling is efficient and environmentally sound, and there is a notable lack of public transportation in this town.”

“Carlos talks about him all the time.”

“There’s nothing inherently romantic about that. Tim talks about Sasha quite a lot.”

Martin covers his mouth.

 _“Now_ what?”

Martin decides to let that Tim point go. “Okay, so— What did you… _think_ they were?”

Jon huffs and crosses his arms. “It’s really none of my business, now, is it?”

“They’re not exactly hiding it.”

“This is besides the point.” Jon turns away.

Martin opens his mouth, but closes on the words bubbling up.

Everytime he thinks they might be bonding in some way, he misjudges.

“Right,” he says, the mirth wilting from his chest. “Right, yeah.” He digs into his pocket and pulls out the note with the code on it. He holds it out for Jon. “I— I wrote it down, to be sure we could get in, in case I forgot.” He scratches behind his neck with his other hand. “You should probably post it somewhere for if something like this happens again.”

Jon takes the code and puts it in his wallet for safekeeping.

* * *

It’s Jon who ends up finding the radio. Someone packed it by itself in a box otherwise only filled with styrofoam, which is alarming, but Martin’s going to keep his lips sealed about that. Jon turns it on, but it just plays a light static.

“What station?” Jon asks.

“It’s already set.” There’s enough for Jon to worry about without haunted radios in the mix.

It runs on batteries, which seem to work fine, so they bring it back near the doorway. Jon puts it on one of the stacks, and Martin walks a bit down the aisle and sits with his back against yet another crate. Close enough to hear it, but where he can’t stare at the door and drive himself mad.

Martin finishes settling. Jon’s staring at him from the radio, lips twisted in thought.

“What?” Martin asks, folding in on himself. “I’m sorry— did you—”

“Why didn’t you just call me?”

It takes Martin the span of a breath to understand the question. “I…” Martin fusses with the hem of his shirt. It’s an old shirt, with holes along the seams to show for it. It’s not a shirt he’s worn in public in nearly a decade. He’d been getting ready to sleep. “I didn’t know if your phone would be on, or— or if you’d even check it while you were working.”

Jon’s eyes narrow. “How did you know I was working?”

“I, uh… I _did_ live in the archives for a bit, there. I know you’re not exactly adverse to, um…” how to put this, “unpaid overtime?”

Jon crosses his arms and turns his chin away. “It could’ve been the urgency of the matter with Jane Prentiss. We were all being targeted, you know.”

“It could have.” Martin shrugs, gaze lowering to his feet. “But it wasn’t.”

Jon’s still staring at him. He can feel it on his scalp. Jon tilts his head. “No, I suppose it wasn’t.” He sighs and finally looks away. Jon rubs a hand down his face and moves to sit with his back against another wooden crate, facing the door. “I should have grabbed my laptop. If we’re going to be stuck here anyway, I would prefer to be working.”

Martin shrinks into himself. “Sorry… I should’ve grabbed something when…”

“When…?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, nothing for it. You were focusing on getting to safety. I…” Jon crosses his legs at the knees. “I appreciate it.”

“O— Oh! Uh, y—” Martin swallows. “You’re welcome.”

Jon hums. There’s a pop of static from the radio, and they turn to look at it. 

“What station do you think it’s set to?” Jon asks.

“Cecil’s, no question.” Martin doesn’t hesitate in answering. Jon groans. “What?”

“Does it have to be Cecil’s show? Surely there are other news stations.”

“No, there aren’t— wait, why? What’s wrong with NVCR?” Martin frowns. Cecil works hard on Night Vale Community Radio. He loves what he does. “I like Cecil’s show.”

Jon grunts. “It’s like watching a documentary on conspiracy theories.”

“Oh, come now, Jon. I know you’re a bit of a skeptic, but even you have to admit that if there’s spooky happenings anywhere, they’re happening in Night Vale.”

Jon hums. “I just think he’s exaggerating. He _does_ work for a news outlet, after all. Sensationalizing is part of the business model.”

Martin cuts himself off from replying. He’d rather not get into this argument with Jon again, especially if they’re gonna be stuck here for the foreseeable future.

Jon seems to realize that they’re about to argue too. He sobers.

The tension only thickens every second, but Martin doesn’t know how to break the silence, and—even worse—he’s sure his voice will crack if he tries.

Martin pulls out the notes app on his phone again. He plays at attempting to start on a poem and not worrying about what Jon’s doing.

* * *

> **CECIL:** The dust storm is over. I repeat: .revo si mrots tsud ehT

“Finally,” Jon says. He stands, wincing from the unkind treatment the concrete must’ve had on his spine. Martin’s joints agree, and he wouldn’t be surprised if his skin were pocked in wood groove indents from the crate. “What time is it?”

Martin checks his watch. “Half past midnight,” he says. Five hours, they’ve been down here.

Jon sighs.

“I suppose I’ll have to pick up where I left off first thing in the morning.”

Martin bunches his shoulders. “Sorry.”

“Nothing for it.” Jon’s volume drops. “Not your fault.”

It doesn’t make Martin feel less guilty, but it’s nice to hear.

Martin climbs up the short couple of steps to the basement entrance. He grabs the wheel on the door and turns it.

It doesn’t budge.

He frowns, trying again first one way, then the other.

Okay— okay, this can’t be happening. Martin dries his hands off on his shirt. Third time’s the charm?

“What are you waiting for?” Jon asks. “I would really like to return to my hotel now.”

The wheel protests. It moves a few centimeters before jamming again.

“It’s not—” Martin widens his stance and cranks with all his might. He manages another centimeter but no more than that.

“What’re you doing?” Jon asks.

“I… Jon— I, I can’t get the door open. I—” Martin shoves at it.

This isn’t happening to him. Not _again._

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m _sure._ I—” He takes a step back and throws his shoulder into it.

“Some debris must be blocking it,” Jon says. He taps his foot, frustration at being made to wait clear in the gravel of his voice. “We’ll have to wait for someone to clear it.”

Martin grabs the handle and uses it as leverage to pull himself even harder against the door. Something in his shoulder twinges. The metal bangs and shakes, but otherwise stays firmly closed on them.

“Hey, what are you— stop that. It’s alright, it’s just—”

“It’s not _opening._ It—”

Martin steps back a little and tries the leverage technique again with the extra momentum. He catches his funny bone on the doorway, and it _burns,_ reverberating up his arm. Worst of all, it ruined his swing. The bang isn’t even as loud as his last attempt. He’s panting from the effort.

“Martin, _stop!_ You’re going to hurt yourself!”

Martin steps down both stairs and gives himself some space. He takes a running start at the door.

A pressure and a yank on Martin’s other arm, and he swings out of the way. He stumbles, and the grip Jon has on his bicep helps keep him upright.

“Martin! It’s alright!” Jon’s saying. He moves so Martin can’t seethe door, free hand coming to rest on Martin’s other arm. “Calm down.” Jon turns Martin by the shoulders. “It’s going to be alright. People know we’re here—”

“You knew I was in my flat, too, but that didn’t—” Martin clamps his mouth shut with an audible click of teeth. He realizes his ragged breathing is only partially exertion. Martin swallows, and he forces himself to take a deep breath. Calm _down._ “Right, yes, you’re right—” he stumbles out of Jon’s grip, rushing through the words. Martin rakes his fingers through his hair. “I’m being— I’m being ridiculous. You’re— of course, you’re right.”

Jon’s frozen with his arm partially outstretched. He blinks, grabs his elbow with his other arm, and physically pulls it back to his side.

Martin curses himself for being entirely too transparent. He needs a better grip.

Jon clears his throat. He fixes his posture.

“I see,” he says. “I hadn’t… considered that this might be reminiscent of Prentiss’s—”

“Hm? O— Oh! Oh, it’s fine. I hadn’t even— didn’t even think of it until you’d said that.”

Jon stares at him.

“Really!” Martin scratches at his chin. “There’s nothing that much in common between them. After all, I _could_ have left my flat, it’s just that… y’know. Besides that, it smells a lot nicer down here, I have my phone—even if it’s not working right now, and— and you’re right. People will come looking soon enough. So, really, this is just a— a new situation altogether.”

Jon hums. “Right.”

Martin’s never been a good liar when it comes to himself. “So,” Martin starts, desperately searching his brain for a change of subject “since we’re definitely stuck here until morning, what is there to do?”

Jon raises an eyebrow. After a breath, he sighs through his nose and moves his hands to his hips.

“I suppose we’ll have to look around and find out.”

They’re much less thorough the second time around the basement, but they find more of the stuff that Carlos mentioned. White slatted wooden doors lead into a pantry with a sink. Martin takes the chance to splash some water on his face. He realizes, belatedly, that there’s no towel. He resigns himself to drying off with the hem of his pajama T-shirt.

If Jon notices, he doesn’t say anything. Another small compassion, Martin supposes.

Next to the pantry is a short set of stairs leading to another door, identical to the one they entered through.

“This must lead to the main lab,” Martin says.

“How can you tell?” Jon asks. He tries to crank the handle and grunts with the effort.

“I’ve walked to visit Carlos on my lunch breaks before.”

Jon shoves at the door. “It won’t open either.”

Martin rubs at his arms. “Figures.” His eyes scan the floor.

On the way back, Jon checks a little of what’s in the folders, but it just seems to be research notes: the kind researchers are required to keep for five years after collection before the eventual burning.

“Well,” Martin says as the radio comes in sight again. “I guess it’s a shelter.”

It makes more sense in his brain—that the space was built for practical use and not entertainment—but he can’t make his mouth form the words.

Martin slumps against the wall next to the couple stairs up.

Jon keeps standing there, mouth twisted. He does a final cursory glance about.

“Oh,” Jon says. He disappears from view among the rows. Based on the echoing sound, he doesn’t take more than five steps away and back total. He’s got something in his hand, inspecting it. “A pen.”

He offers it to Martin.

Martin’s brows knit.

“You have that notebook,” Jon says by way of an explanation.

Martin blinks.

“You write in it on your breaks and sometimes when you’re _supposed_ to be focusing on a call with a follow-up case.”

Martin stares at the black ballpoint pen. The ones he keeps in his bag are gel.

Jon tilts his head, his outstretched arm retracting slightly. “Or am I misremembering?”

“No! No, I— I do. Just… not right now? I, uh— I was in a bit of a rush, so…”

“Ah.” Jon pulls his arm back. “Of course.”

Jon moves away again. When he steps back into view, he’s empty-handed. Martin thinks he might’ve literally put the pen back where he found it. 

Jon’s returning steps falter, and his mouth twists again. He changes course, approaching the wall. He doesn’t sit _next to_ Martin, per say, but he does sit… nearby. Close enough that he could easily slide into arms’ reach.

“What, uh—” Jon clears his throat. “What _do_ you write in that book?”

Martin shrugs. “Just— just some, uh…” his voice drops on the word “poems.”

“O— oh.”

The conversation stalls. Martin’s not sure what Jon was expecting.

“You… like poetry then?”

“Y— yeah, I… a bit.” It’s complicated, but there’s no chance Jon actually wants to hear all that. He’s just feeling awkward because Martin lost control.

Jon fidgets, shifting his legs to something a bit comfier, and clears his throat again.

“So, you’ve… you studied parapsychology, yes?” Jon asks. “I’m sure you’re more than well-acquainted on the ramifications of surviving a malicious hostage situation of the, uh…” Jon circles his hand, motioning the words through his mouth. “The caliber that you underwent.”

That’s literally the worst thing he could have said right now. This is one of Martin’s worst nightmares. At least at his interview he’d recently checked out books from the library, so parapsychology terminology and buzzwords had been fresh in his mind.

“Y— yes. Of course, it’s just—” Martin scrambles. He settles on a universal nonanswer. “There’s a difference when— between _knowing_ what happens and… and having it happen to you.”

Jon hums. “Fair enough.”

The acceptance settles in the air. Martin holds his breath to keep from disturbing it.

“Do you… like parapsychology?”

Seriously, has he found Martin out? Is this some kind of— of torture? Why is he doing this?

Martin shrugs. He can only show his cards once, and he has to keep the charade up. He can’t risk being wrong. “It’s… it pays the bills.” He rubs at his wrist and watches himself do it. “I wouldn’t have this job, if not for it.”

Jon hums. “Not exactly a shining review, all things considered.”

Martin forces a smile. He hopes Jon won’t ask any more questions. He can’t outright ask to stop talking about it—that’d be suspicious—but even _Jon_ must realize when a topic’s touchy.

“What were the classes—”

“Why the sudden interest?”

Jon bristles. “What do you mean?”

“Well— not to be rude, but— you’ve never really… cared to ask about— about me very much.”

“Just making conversation.” He looks at the wall between them with a huff. Martin’s brows furrow as he tries to make sense of that. Jon doesn’t worry about—

A thought hits Martin like a water balloon.

“Are you… trying to— to distract me?”

Jon crosses his arms, eyebrow raising. “Well it won’t _work_ if you call _attention_ to it.”

A few blinks later, Martin realizes his own mouth is hanging open. Jon bolts up with a huff and marches a foot or so away. Martin braces to be yelled at with the reflexes of muscle memory.

Jon makes his way to the radio and fiddles with it. Varying kinds of static play at different volumes one right after the other.

He’s trying… to distract Martin.

Martin watches him play with the radio dials, cycling through the stations over and over at various speeds. He’s trying to keep Martin from thinking about all this.

“Are you…” Martin stalls, but Jon’s hand has stilled already, so he powers through. “Are you worried? About… me?”

“I thought we already went over this before we were sent out here.” Jon shoves himself to standing and clicks the radio off with more force than necessary. “I’m entitled to my worry.”

Jon puts his hands on his hips and glares at the radio.

“Do you really not believe in all the statements we read?” springs out of Martin’s mouth.

Jon looks up at Martin. He sighs.

“It’s complicated.” Jon taps his foot. “But the short of it is… yes, I believe that… _some_ of the statements… _may_ have happened.”

“Do you believe mine?”

“You’ve asked me that before.”

“I’m asking again.”

Jon bites at the corners of his mouth. “I do,” he finally answers. “You and Sasha’s both.”

“Then—”

“When… When a child is scared to sleep at night because it’s too dark, you put a nightlight in their room.” He grabs at his elbows. “You tell them what the sounds and shapes in the dark are. It’s harder to be afraid of something when I understand it.” 

And thrown in the archives with no warning and no instructions and all manner of unnamed danger…

Martin… rethinks on the “flood” thing again. Maybe Jon’s one heavy rain after the other because… because working at the archive—being surrounded by all these horrors—is like his whole world is burning down.

Martin really needs some sleep. That was… way too dramatic.

Martin swallows. “I, uh… don’t want to talk about my— my degree.” Jon finally looks at Martin again. “We— we’re always at work, so— and we’re… I know technically we’re there _now?_ But it just feels— I’d rather talk about…” Martin does _not_ say ‘anything else’, but he certainly thinks it. He might not feel so out of place around the others, if things like “science” worked the way it does in Night Vale everywhere else, but it doesn’t. If they talk about work, he will get swept away, and Jon’s already suspicious of him, from the sound of it.

Jon hums. “Fair enough.”

“We can…” Martin knows that he should offer something else to do, since he’s the one who shot down Jon’s attempts. “We can play a conversation game, if you want?”

Jon’s face—like he’s bitten straight into a moldy lemon—has Martin regretting the circumstances that led him to be able to speak English.

“Fine.” Jon’s voice drips with disdain, but he moves to sit across from Martin anyway. “How do you… how’s it work, then?”

Tim is never going to believe him.

“So you— we’ll take turns saying… we each think of a thing we enjoy, which— that maybe we don’t get to talk about or— or no one knows you like it, and you… tell the other person about it.”

Jon is staring at him.

This is still leagues better than Jon asking him about his fake degree, but a god with a sense of mercy would strike Martin down right here.

“We don’t have to—”

“No, no.” Jon’s voice is flat. “It’s fine. I’m merely thinking.”

“I can start?” Martin offers.

“Please.”

“I really like…”

He should have thought through what he was going to say before he offered. Poetry? No, that’s too embarrassing, especially if Jon asks him to— asks to _see_ some later. And technically Jon already knows about it, so it’s disqualified. Animals? No, that’s too obvious _everyone_ loves animals. Tim knows he likes puzzles, and Sasha’s seen the photographs from his birdwatching, and oh God, Jon’s getting more and more impatient by the minute. This was an awful idea. He forces himself to blurt out: “Karaoke.”

Oh God, that was nearly as embarrassing as poetry.

Jon’s face stays absolutely still, but there’s a tension around his mouth now. He’s trying not to laugh at him. This is worse than Prentiss. At least Prentiss hadn’t been _entirely_ his fault.

“Not—” Martin rushes to fill the room with _something._ “Not in public. So, I— singing? I guess you’d— I should’ve said— When I’m alone, I, I like to sing along with— well, just sing.” His face is going to give itself a sunburn. “It helps pass the time with— when I’m doing chores, and it— it’s nice if a— when I— when a song has a singer in my range, and we harmonize.”

He manages to hold himself back from saying: it’s what got him started doing poetry. He’d wanted to write his own music, but eventually just fell in love with lyrics. Poems were the natural follow-up.

Jon nods—once, decidedly. “I can see that.”

Martin would reel back if he weren’t already leaning against the wall. “Really?”

“Well, yes. You hum under your breath in the canteen, sometimes. Plus, you honestly seem the type. I can easily imagine you tapping your foot and singing to a little ditty on the radio.”

Martin snorts before he can help it.

Jon bristles. “What?”

“N— nothing. Sorry.”

“No, what?”

“Nothing!”

_“Martin.”_

“Just… I— I can’t remember the last time I heard someone say ‘ditty’?”

“I—” Jon sputters. “Ditty is a perfectly valid word!”

“It is! It is, just—”

“Just _what?”_ Jon narrows his eyes, but it’s a challenge, not a threat.

“It’s your turn,” Martin blurts.

Jon’s eyes spring back open. “Ah, uh. Hm.” Jon leans back and his brows furrow in thought. “I…” Jon starts. He scratches at his chin, and he huffs. “It has to be something I _like?”_

“And that—” Martin rethinks the caveat that no one else should know it too, if the ‘liking’ part is already catching Jon for a loop. “Yes. Something you enjoy.”

“I like…” Jon tilts his head. “Stationery.”

Martin does not laugh. Martin also does _not_ make a funny face. He hums thoughtfully, encouragingly.

“There really is something to be said about well-designed stationery,” Jon keeps going now that the record of his thoughts is spinning under the needle. “The texture of sliding a pen or pencil across different parchments can vary quite a bit depending on material and quality—as you know, I’m sure—and I could spend quite a bit of time discussing the value of porosity for different mediums and how this drastically affects arts like calligraphy or watercolor and why it’s important to know if you’re using a dye-based or pigment-based ink and whether it’s suspended in water or glycol.”

Martin thinks—with the same level of epiphany that he’d had with Jon trying to distract him—that Jon gets very expressive when he’s excited.

* * *

Where there is an absence of fear—either first or secondhand—It can’t maintain Its observations for long.

It leaves the remote lab. There are many forms of sustenance, in Night Vale, but for once this is not one of them.

* * *

The metal door slams open with a bang. Martin jumps, his snores cutting off awkwardly. Jon jolts up shrieking.

“Righty-ho, then!” Tim struts down the stairs, broom gleefully tossed over his shoulder. He swings it down and rests it on the floor, leaning his weight on the handle. “Hope we didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

The two blink at him.

“What—” Martin’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “What time is it?”

“Time for y’all’s reintroduction to society, now c’mon,” Tim bows, gesturing out the door. “After you.”

Martin tries to get up from where he’d made a bag of honey into a pillow to catch some sleep. Every nerve in his body screams at him for the concrete mattress. He groans involuntarily. There’s a roar of crinkling, and Jon isn’t doing much better at getting out from his own crate-and-styrofoam bed.

“I know, I know, grandpas. The old bones just don’t work like they used to. You’ve been in here so long, do you even remember how to act in regular society? But that’s not the state’s problem, and unfortunate—”

“Tim,” Martin pleads. “I slept for about three hours max on concrete without a blanket. I need— Please, stop… talking so fast.”

Styrofoam peanuts shower the floor in a crackling snowfall as Jon pulls himself out of his crate bed. Tim, to his credit, does help Martin stand.

“These prison beds—” he starts.

“Seriously shut up.” It’s out of Martin’s mouth before he can properly have the thought. Thankfully, Tim bursts into laughter.

The three of them make their way out of the basement shelter. Martin flinches at the sunlight. It hurts his eyes. Jon takes a sharp inhale from behind him shortly after.

“Fresh air and freedom, am I right?” Tim exaggerates a deep breath through his nose. If Martin tried that, he’d end up hacking out a lung, but Tim pulls it off.

“Quite,” Jon says, already stomping back towards his desk. He only makes it a step before he notices the rattling. Tim moves away, towards Sasha, who’s holding a matching broom.

Martin’s eyes adjust to the change in light, and he realizes… There’s no glass in the windows—having all been blown in—and covering the floor is—

Huh.

“Are these golf balls?” Martin asks.

“Yep.” Tim kicks some aside with the length of his foot. “Storm of the century: golf balls the size of hail.” He gestures back towards the entrance with his head. “They were wedging the machine on all sides. That’s why it wasn’t moving.”

“Martin!” Carlos jogs in the lab. He throws his arms around Martin’s middle in a brief hug, shying away before Martin can return it. “I’m so sorry about the door! I hadn’t considered how a sliding mechanism might be less than ideal, even with the protected track. I’ll have to consider alternate exit methods in case of other scenarios where—”

Cecil strides up next to Carlos. He lightly touches Carlos’s shoulder to announce his presence. Carlos jumps, but a smile glides easily in place when he sees who’s there.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Carlos finishes. “How was the shelter?”

“I’m happy to see you’re both fine too.” Martin rubs his eyes. “It’s a lot… bigger? Than I thought it’d be.”

Carlos chuckles. “That’s what they all say.” Behind him, Sasha overdramatically mouths _That’s what she said_ to Tim.

“You could also do with a bed in there, since it’s got preparations for a long-term stay.”

“Oh! Good point. I’ll definitely make a note of that.”Carlos leans in.

“And, uh…” Carlos drops his voice. “How was he?” Carlos gestures with his eyes to where Jon collects his laptop.

“O— oh, uh… better than you’d think, actually? It started off, uh… rough. But by the end, I—” Martin sees Sasha and Tim beaming at each other and frowns. “Better than you’d think,” he finishes.

Carlos offers a light smile. “That’s good to hear,” and it sounds like he means it.

“I’m glad you two are alright,” Cecil says. He leans in closer to Martin and lowers his voice as well, “and I feel much better knowing that that one’s got friends who can warn him of danger, since he’s not very supportive of his local community radio.”

Cecil winks.

Martin’s shoulders hike.

“Martin!” Jon calls from across the room. Martin startles, and the three of them turn to look at him. “You, uh— Make sure you get some rest. Feel free to take the day off.”

“Wh— hey! Boss!” Tim holds his arms out wide.

“What about us?” Sasha asks.

“Obviously, when the golf balls are all cleaned—”

Tim groans loudly, slumping down the handle of his broom. Jon frowns.

“Are you going to help us, at least?” Sasha asks. “You _are_ our boss. Lead by example?”

Jon sighs through his nose. He sets his laptop and his jacket back down on his desk and marches over to Sasha.

“Obviously,” he takes the broom from her, “I wasn’t going to just leave the two of you alone to do it.”

“Two of us?” Tim asks. 

Sasha walks over to the janitor’s closet to get another broom. “Martin’s going home,” she yells over her shoulder.

“He’s had a long night,” Jon says.

Tim raises his eyebrows and slowly turns his head to Martin.

He waggles his eyebrows at him. “Is that—”

“No,” Martin stops him.

“Wh— _ugh! No.”_ Jon reels back, offended.

* * *

Cecil and Carlos quietly leave while the four outsiders bicker. Carlos slips his hand into Cecil’s and slots their fingers together. As soon as they’re out of earshot of the lab, Cecil looks at Carlos and points with a look back at the building.

“I saw it,” Carlos says, covering his smile with his free hand. “Do you think Martin…”

“Maybe not yet, but if I had to take a guess, I’d say _very_ soon.”

“Did you see Jon’s?”

“No! Him too?”

“Not quite. He’ll take a bit longer, if he ever does.” Carlos tilts his head. “It’s funny, though, isn’t it? Maybe there’s something magic about the sound booth.”

Cecil raises his eyebrows, the silence between them weighted with unspoken meaning. Carlos’s cheeks darken.

“You know what I mean,” he says, smacking Cecil’s bicep with the back of his hand. Cecil huffs a laugh.

“How long do you think it’ll take _his_ Carlos to figure it out?”

Carlos snorts. “Hopefully not as long as yours did.” He rubs his thumb across Cecil’s knuckles.

“I don’t know,” Cecil says. “Something tells me that it’ll be longer than you’d hope.”

Carlos looks at him from the corners of his eyes. “Something or _something?”_

Cecil hums. “It’s hard to say at this point. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Proverb: a bird in the hand is worth a hundred bird-sized horses in the bush.
> 
> Nils is from [ the WtNV book "It Devours!" by Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink](http://www.welcometonightvale.com/books/). HIGHLY recommend I love it so much.
> 
> I chose "If I Could Tell Her" from Dear Evan Hansen for the chap title for a very specific reason, but it's probably not the reason you think :3c


	3. New Normal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Answers are given on a home visit, and reality bends itself to the first truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to [Cole](https://twitter.com/bibophilophile) for all your help. This chapter wouldn't be nearly as good without your advice ;u;.
> 
> Everytime a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. “Please stop it,” the angel said at yesterday’s press conference, “my back is too heavy, and it’s become virtually impossible to get through the doors at the DMV. Welcome to Night Vale.

After taking Monday off, the Magnus crew spend all of Tuesday getting “business as usual” back up and running. They check what was broken during the storm and what needs to be done about it. The remote lab’s sturdy, but the golf balls did a number, especially on some of the equipment close to the windows. The morning is spent taking stock of the damage and the whole of the afternoon consists of repairs and ordering replacements.

Jon would take the losses in much better stride if Tim would stop talking about birdies, “strokes”, snowmen, and pars. He’s as loud as Martin is uncharacteristically silent.

The typical dynamic Jon bears witness to in the bullpen is as such: Sasha helps Martin, both of their heads lowered over some document relevant to the question at hand, and from his desk, Tim shoots out a quip or other remark where he can. This is the routine, with Sasha as the diligent aid, Martin as the persistent stride—despite the slight limp, and Tim taking on the dual role of commentator and participant.

And yet, of all the times Jon left his office today, not once has Martin had one of the others with him.

Considering Martin’s mental state when he learned he was locked in, the sudden shift in demeanor is worrisome. If that weren’t enough, Martin’s shoulders hike when Jon opens his office door, so on some level, Jon must be part of the problem.

It is a workplace, and Jon stands by his insistence as much, and Martin was aware of the occupational hazards when he transferred. At the same time, it’s not exactly comparable to most other workplaces. Martin’s constitution is stronger than what Jon might have given him credit for, but perhaps Jon has been expecting too much of him so soon by sending him back into the field that endangered him in the first place.

Maybe follow-ups should be done in pairs in the future, to avoid repeat incidents. That’s not the issue at hand, but Jon makes a note of it for future consideration.

At the very least, it’d be best if Jon had a talk with Martin about expectations moving forward.

Jon grabs his yogurt from the miniature fridge in the kitchenette area and steels himself. It’s near the end of everyone’s shift, so if there’s any time to have this discussion, it’s now. Work will begin as usual tomorrow, and Jon owes it to his assistants to make accommodations for their needs before it becomes necessary.

Martin tenses when Jon changes course towards Martin’s desk instead of back to his own office, but Jon’s already committed.

“Martin,” he says, “would you please see me in my office?”

Tim and Sasha’s bantering cuts off.

Jon really wishes those two would mind their own business.

“A— Sure, let me—” Martin closes his laptop and shuffles some papers into a stack.

Stalling, then. “Whenever you’re ready is fine, just be sure to step in before you head out for the day.” Jon continues making his way back to his office and closes the door behind him, giving Martin some semblance of quasi-privacy to gather his courage.

Jon returns to his desk and decides to fill the time waiting by completing order forms. Thankfully all the equipment to be replaced is nonessential to their current methods of investigation, but— 

The door clicks open, and Martin shuffles through. Jon caps his pen and folds his hands on his desk, gesturing towards the chair across in invitation. Martin takes the seat, looking very much like a pill bug three-quarters of the way closed.

“You wanted to see me?” he asks.

“Yes, I did. I’ve been noticing your behavior has been uncharacteristically antisocial as of late, and you seem as though you’ve been on edge today. With the events over the weekend, I want to be frank: do you need more time to recover after the storm?”

Martin blinks rapidly. He must be surprised that Jon noticed, similar to the way he was about the “pen” incident.

“I, um— No, I’m fine. I’ve just been… waiting?”

Jon tilts his head. “Waiting,” he prompts.

“You, uh… we were going to have our assignments for the week passed out on Monday.”

Ah, yes, of course. In the recent commotion, Jon had prioritized assessing damages over task assignment.

“Why is that so concerning?” Should Jon have outright said that he was reorganizing the day’s priorities? He had assumed that he was the only one around thrown off by schedule changes to a notable degree, but perhaps that was unprofessional.

“I’ve waited— uh… _been_ waiting to hear your decision about when I’ll visit Old Woman Josie’s.”

Ah. There inlies the real issue.

Martin was already apprehensive at the idea of visiting the residence long before being reminded of his trauma.

Jon runs his options through his head, but vocalizes his first worry as he does: “For Heaven’s sakes, Martin, just ‘Josie’ will be quite enough. There’s no need to tack on ‘Old Woman’ every time.”

“R— right, sorry. That’s what everyone in town calls her, so I just— I— Sorry.”

Martin’s back forms a “C”, and he wrings his sleeves as though they were soaked through.

Nothing for it, then.

“I’ve been thinking about the Josie visit, however,” Jon starts, “and I need you with Tim placing the second round of sensors tomorrow.”

“You— what?”

Martin blinks. His head springs up to meet Jon’s gaze.

“You… do you not think Ol— uh, Josie’s house will help?”

“No, no. I didn’t say that. It’s a promising lead and one I don’t intend to lose. I’ll be following-up on the angels and Josie’s house tomorrow, while the two of you and Sasha place more temporal sensors.” He makes a note—to ask Sasha to name the second round of sensors after greek letters instead of latin for organization’s sake—under the consideration for paired follow-ups. “Of course. Carlos brought up a good point the other day as to the safety outside of the city limits. Tim will be in contact with Sasha, but it’d be best to have someone on the scene with him to attend to more time-sensitive issues.”

Martin watches him write. “Are you sure?”

“As to what?”

“Well, just… you said it yourself that the angels could be dangerous too.”

“I said no such thing. I said we should take reasonable precautions, which is true no matter the circumstances.”

“I can do it, though.”

Jon sets his pen down and looks up at Martin. “I know you can.” He quirks his eyebrows and adds with a bit of mirth: “Is it so hard to believe that I want to see the angels for myself?”

“I— I guess not.”

Martin plays with his sleeves.

“Is there something else you’re worried about?”

Martin slumps. “I just think that… even if it isn’t dangerous, someone should go with—”

“I’m quite certain I can handle myself.”

“Well, yes, I’m sure you can, but—”

“The town thinks they’re _angels,_ Martin. How malicious can they be, really?”

“I— I guess.”

There’s a heavy beat of silence.

“Knock on wood?” Martin raps his knuckles against Jon’s desk.

“Quite.” Jon dismisses him with a nod of his head, and hopes he doesn’t imagine Martin leaving with a much lighter step than he entered.

* * *

“Isn’t this exciting?” Tim throws his arm across Martin’s shoulders. “Two eligible, handsome bachelors out on the assfuck nowhere, planting clocks and riding—”

_“Tim!”_

Tim laughs, slipping away and clapping Martin on the arm with it. “Alright, the truck I’m borrowing is right this way. Were you wanting to drive?”

Martin shudders to even think about handling the monster of a truck he’s seen Tim come to work in. “No thanks.”

“Yeah, I figured you’d want shotgun.”

Martin huffs, but he’s smiling. “Tim, please.” Tim laughs but lets the subject drop.

The truck is a very… American affair. Four wheel drive, according to Tim, and larger than at least four of the cars Martin’s used to. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were flats smaller than it. The sides are custom-painted a rich indigo color, and the fender and grill are both polished a bright silver that blinds Martin a bit to look directly at.

Martin climbs into the passenger’s seat. Tim starts the engine, the truck roaring to life under them. The first thing Tim does is roll the window down to rest an elbow there, and he drives off with his other hand on the top of the steering wheel.

“Glad to have someone with me to talk to this time,” Tim says. “It gets boring fast.”

“Aw, does it? It’s so picturesque out here, though. I could watch the landscape go by for hours.”

“Yeah, well. Gets old fast when you have to focus on the road.” Tim shrugs. “Jon wasn’t thinking about the view when he reassigned you.”

Martin hums. “Probably not, no.”

Tim drums his fingers on the wheel. The wind cuts into the car bed through the open window as he speeds up. “Why do you think he did?”

“Getting me out of the way, I assume.” Martin turns to watch the buildings pass. They’re near the limits, and there won’t be anything but the horizon for a good while once they’re out of Night Vale. “The angels are a big lead, after all.”

“Jackass.”

“I mean, I’m certainly not complaining.”

“Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad to have you here and not hunting down some other freaky demon shit, but still.” Tim clicks his tongue. 

The street ends, but Tim keeps driving, and they’re off road.

The sand, the color of creamsicles, glitters as the borrowed pick-up blows by. It occurs to Martin that popsicle and desert might not go together well, but it’s the comparison his brain’s made, so it’s what he’s stuck with. The wheels kick up clouds of dust like balloons on the back of a “Just Married” sign. The truck rattles and shakes, and Tim rolls up his window to keep the disturbed landscape from choking them.

Tim continues: “If that was Jon’s logic, that’s just bullshit.”

Martin shrugs a shoulder. “Yeah, well… he’s our boss.”

“Oh, come on, Martin. He can’t hear you out here. Say _one_ mean thing about him. I know you’ve got it in you.”

Martin snorts. “This again?”

It’s an old game Tim’s liked to play with Martin for practically the whole time they’ve worked for the Magnus Institute. He likes to pretend that Martin has never said a truly mean thing in his life and tries to goad a real insult out of him. They’ve always leaned towards their bosses, but lately it’s only been about Jon.

Of course, Martin takes great pleasure in trying to skirt the rules of this game.

“He’s…” Martin trails off.

“Uptight?” Tim offers. “A pain in the ass?”

“Obtuse.”

Tim snorts. “Wow, professor. Such a _scathing_ review of your colleague.”

“Oh! That’s right, I haven’t told you yet.”

Tim glances at him, interest already piqued. “Told me what?”

“You’ll never believe what I found out during the storm.”

Their GPS pings, and Tim curses, slowing the truck down. They pull to a stop, and Tim unbuckles. “Give me one second, I gotta—”

Tim gets out. He reaches into the trunk and grabs one of the palm-sized discs. Lights come on as he presses a button, and he walks a bit away from the truck before dropping it on the ground. It lands face-down, and he kicks it over.

Tim turns and offers a dramatic bow to Martin before jogging back.

“Riveting,” Martin says as Tim climbs back in.

“Like I said.” Tim rebuckles and pulls the truck away. “Now what were you saying? About Jon?”

“Nothing much, just…” Martin looks out the window to hide his smile. “He didn’t know about Cecil and Carlos.”

Martin glances at Tim’s reaction, but all Tim’s done is tilt his head. “What about them?”

It occurs to Martin that maybe the others don’t know as much about Cecil and Carlos as he does. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“That they’re married?”

“Oh, w— of course I know that. You’d have t—” Tim chokes on his words. He doubles over with a wheeze, chest bumping the steering wheel. “He didn’t!”

“He did.”

“What did he _think_ they—”

“He wouldn’t say.”

Tim says something incomprehensible through his convulsions.

“He tried to use you and Sasha as an example of why their relationship might not be romantic.”

Tim pulls to a stop, forehead dropping to the wheel. He slaps at the side of it.

“I gotta—” Tim flails for his phone. “Give me— I _have_ to text Sasha. She’s gonna _love_ this.”

* * *

There is only one segment of Tim and Martin’s little errand of which It takes particular notice of. The space around Tim and Martin—desert that stretches like the muscles of a yawning mouth—transfers back to a more urban setting as they cut through Night Vale to get to their next destination.

“Have you actually seen any of them?” Tim asks in reference to the being which they call angels but which calls themself “Erika”.

“A couple times at the grocer.”

“Really?”

“I— I mean, I think? They… they certainly weren’t human, but that’s…”

“Not saying a lot around these parts, is it?”

Once again, Tim’s words hold more truth than even he knows. This is something It’s noticed about Tim: between his teeth he carries a great deal of knowledge, which he flosses out strategically. He is personable and sincere, but he has also been burned by trust. Burn victims often find fine motor control difficult due to scar tissue. 

When he says it, Tim thinks of peeled skin and sawdust. Martin thinks he’s a clown and laughs appropriately.

Tim’s rented truck passes the Ralph’s, where a projection of the being that calls themself “Erika” has been waiting.

The being that calls themself “Erika” makes Eye contact with It through the truck windows. They’re a tall and muscular “Erika” with silky silver hair that reaches past their hips. Martin’s met them before. So has Tim, though he would not recognize them for the many eyes and their lengthened posture.

“Look!” Martin gestures towards the Ralph’s. “There’s one right there!”

The being that calls themself “Erika” is made of many but also made of one. They present whatever physical form they desire. A soul joining “Erika” may take on multiple patrons, the most common of which being Its End. This “Erika”, devoted to Its Hunt and Its Eye, has picked an honest form. Its “Erika” devotes themselves to truth, especially those acquainted more thoroughly with the Eye, but not all of the souls in “Erika” devote themselves to It. “Erika’s” souls are tricky business. Much like It, there are many souls to “Erika”. They share a name and memories, but not physical form nor intent.

“Right there!” Martin points, choosing to ignore the rudeness of the gesture in the urgency. They finish passing the Ralph’s, and Tim cranes his neck to look in each rearview.

“You’re taking the piss.” Tim is grinning. “I didn’t know you had a bit of a prankster gleam in you too. That was horrid, no offense, but we can work on it. You’ve got promise.”

Martin watches the tall being, radiating dark light from its pupils, on his side’s rear view. They seem to keep their eyes on him too, but with as many angles as their eyes can capture, he isn’t sure.

In fact, they have enough eyes to stare at two points. They watch It, for the old habit, and they stare at Martin.

He decides to drop the subject and hope that it’ll make the feeling of staring go away.

But with Martin, It almost never goes away, whether he can tell yet or not. He will be able to tell, soon enough. There is a plucking in Its Web that tells It so. The being that calls themself “Erika” can feel it too, though their patrons’ language is indecipherable into Its own.

* * *

There really is just a giant halo around the place. Jon had thought that’d been… a trick of the lighting that Martin had moved on from without question or another of Martin’s exaggerations. Martin isn’t the most accurate of sources, even amongst Jon’s assistants, and he was perfectly ready to chalk the “halo” up to a mistake.

But, no, that really is a giant halo.

It looks normal enough, besides that. A little continental-style place with chipping white paint on the walls and a wraparound porch of dark wood.

All things considered, if it weren’t for the halo, it would make for an inviting place. As it is, though, Jon approaches with a degree of caution. He takes the temporal sensor from his over-the-shoulder bag. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around, as far as he can see, so he slips the sensor under the porch, pushing it behind the wooden leg. 

He powers the sensor on and takes his phone out to message Sasha. He turns his phone off after. If these really are proper supernatural beings (Jon is hesitant to call them “angels” without further evidence), his phone won’t be working near them anyway. Plus, his batteries are nearly gone.

Jon walks the house’s perimeter. The whole way, the halo appears to be completely suspended on its own merit. If it’s being physically held there, the device is well-constructed and hidden phenomenally.

Jon turns the last corner, and someone’s standing on the porch, staring straight at him.

Jon tenses.

“Good afternoon,” the… woman? The thing says. “It is nice of you to finally come meet your new neighbors.”

The hairs on the back of Jon’s neck stand on end, the way they do while he’s recording particular statements.

Definitely a real supernatural being, then. This was an exceptional lead.

“It is a nice day outside,” they continue. “Would you mind if we sat on the porch?”

“Not at all.”That would be ideal, actually. Jon would rather not go into unfamiliar territory owned by a supernatural being. “After you.”

He follows them around the porch’s corner. They show him to a rocker, beautifully carved out of some light-colored wood. Next to it sits a short, round end table.

He sits, but holds still, muscles tense, to keep the chair from tipping in either direction.

“Tea?” they offer.

“No, thank you.”

“Water?”

“Ah, no. I’m quite fine. Thank you.”

They nod and sit. There wasn’t a chair there, but when they finish settling, the eyes Jon recognizes _as_ eyes are still a touch higher than Jon’s. The shadow of the house falls over the both of them, and Jon notes there’s an eerie glow radiating off of them, like a black light.

“Oh, where are my manners?” Jon starts. He offers his hand.

“Jonathan Sims, yes?” They reach out in turn and shake. “I heard on the radio.”

“Ah, right.” He’d forgotten about Martin’s little shout-out. “And you—”

“So,” they start. “You have come with questions?”

“Ah.” Jon recovers quickly. He’s seen quite a few anonymous statements in the archives before. “Yes, a few, if that’s alright.”

They cross their legs. “You’re not at the point where it will have to be, but it is.”

Jon’s brows furrow. “What do you mean?”

They tilt their heads. “You are the head archivist of the Magnus Institute, are you not?”

“I am.”

“Your questions, with time, will bear a weight to them. You will need answers, and people will provide. This is a very friendly town. They are used to it.”

Jon stares at them, lips pursed.

“Right,” he says, for the sake of filling the silence. They sit patiently. Evidently, it’s his turn to talk. “I wanted to ask you some questions about Night Vale’s founding—”

“No, you do not.”

Jon sputters. His eyes narrow. “Excuse me?”

“You want to ask about the entities and the anchor. The founding of Night Vale is a means to an end, in that respect.”

“How— How did you know?”

“We serve the same employer, you and I.”

“Elias said he hadn’t gotten a team out here yet.”

“I do not work for Elias any more than he works for me. We operate on the same level of hierarchies for our patrons.”

“Patron?”

“Entities, to you.”

Jon reels back. The chair tips and Jon clamps his hands on the armrests. He plants his feet and steadies the rocking.

“Which one do you work for?” he eventually asks.

“Is that really what you want to ask?”

“What…” Jon swallows. “Which one does _he_ serve?”

The angel smiles. “I believe he calls it the Eye. Are you familiar?”

Jon has a basic grasp of the entities, but the information Elias gave them was sparse at best. He’d had a feeling that Elias was hiding things. He’s not sure what he feels at the confirmation.

“Robert Smirke,” the angel continues, “a famous human architect, identified fourteen types of entities. The Fearmonger—my word for It—liked the categories he came up with and named Its different parts accordingly. It would take quite a while for me to explain everything, but read through some of the texts written by Smirke and I am sure you will figure it out.”

Jon should have brought a— a notepad. He hadn’t realized what a veritable goldmine this interview would be.

The angel, again, speaks up before his thoughts can finish.“I have three goals for these answers.”

“Oh!” Jon wonders if it would be rude to ask to take notes on his phone, then remembers it’s off. Yes?”

“I intend to help you understand the anchor, tell you where it is, and finally to teach you about rituals.”

“Rituals?” The rest of the sentence catches up. “Wait, anchor? Do you know where—”

“The sequence is important. You will need the first two to understand the third.”

Jon is struck with the thought that there’s something going on here. “Okay… then why don’t you just tell me.”

“Because this conversation, truly, was an interrogation all along. I cannot alter this truth. My patron will not allow it.”

“Okay, fine then. Where is the—”

“In a moment. Again, we must go through this in order, and first, I have to explain. You need to understand the what of the anchor before I can begin to tell you the where of it.”

Jon huffs.

“No need to pout. You will get your answers. Not all of them, though. There are some things simply not meant to be known, and thus I do not know them.” They fold their many hands on top of each other on their lap. “Now, how should we start?”

He huffs again. He doesn’t see why they can’t just give him the whole spiel if they’re going to iron fist the rest of the conversation anyway, but whatever.

“The beginning, I suppose. Do you know what we’re out to find, and what is it?”

They offer a brief smile in what appears to be gratitude. “Of course. We call what you are looking for the anchor.” Jon perks up. “It has existed as long as both universes have, same as Night Vale. We call it ‘anchor’ because that is effectively what it is. It keeps the two universes moored.”

“Is it dangerous?”

Erika tilts their head. “Not inherently. It’s only a joint. The real danger lies in the limbs it connects. An elbow is only dangerous if its bicep uses it in endangering actions.”

He doesn’t like the sound of that.

“The ultimate point of our investigation is to find a way to stop the entities. If we were to destroy—”

“You cannot.” Their eyes flare. “Even if you could, we would not let you.”

“Why not?”

“I will not answer that.”

Jon frowns. “Why not?”

“Because, like I said, I cannot. I am not meant to know, so I do not.”

“You said you work for the Eye. Isn’t that one all about knowledge?”

“I am a vessel of many, including the Eye, but there are things an eye cannot see, no matter how it may look.”

Jon sighs through his nose. “Could it be—”

“You are digressing, head archivist Sims.” Their gaze on him is patient. “If we were supposed to talk about this, I would be able to answer.”

“Right. Your _patrons.”_

“My objectives.”

Jon hums. “Speaking of, do I know enough of what you’ve decided I’m supposed to to move on?”

The angel smiles teasingly. “Can you ever truly know enough, archivist?” They sober. “But, yes, if you have no more questions about the anchor, we can move on.”

Jon nods. He slides forward in the rocking chair, using the balls of his feet to keep it from tipping back. “Where is this ‘anchor’?”

Erika studies Jon for a moment. They smile, but it doesn’t reach any of their eyes.

“You should not have given them the job, you know.”

Jon blinks. The excitement of discovery he’d felt in the air stretches and yanks the breath from his lungs. “What?”

They click their tongue. “I have not personally met Tim nor Sasha, so I cannot say much for them, but that Martin fellow especially is too sweet. It’s a shame, what he has coming.”

Jon narrows his eyes. He’s very glad, suddenly, that he’d had the foresight to not let Martin follow-up on his own. “Is that a threat?”

“Of course not. Any threat I could make pales in comparison to the truth of the matter.”

“What are you talking about?”

They tilt their heads. “I suppose anything is better than the path originally set out for you, of course,” they say, as though Jon hadn’t asked anything at all, “but that poor Martin may be worse for wear at the end of it all.”

Jon's nails claw into the armrests. “If you don’t explain—”

“You see, head archivist Sims, there are some events which must happen, and reality will bend its shape to form into the truth. If you fall, gravity will accelerate you, and time-space accommodates the change accordingly, even though time-space exists on a dimension above you. Some call it ‘fate.’ Others call it ‘destiny,’ but these are lofty terms for the future. The true nature of the Eye is the present. You can only truly see that which is, not was or will.”

They’re leaning forward, suddenly as if they hadn’t moved at all. “There are many ends, head archivist Sims. Not all of them work for these… _entities_ as your kind likes to call them. Some actively work against them.” They slide away and pull a sheet of paper to themselves from the small end table. Jon could’ve sworn that had been empty when he’d sat down. They write something on it. “Here are the coordinates to the anchor.”

“If you even _think_ about hurting—”

“How _dare_ you.” They reel back. It’s the most emotion Jon’s seen from them the entire time, he realizes. “I would never lay my hand on you or any of your assistants. I’m giving you a _warning,_ head archivist Sims, and you would do well to watch who you accuse of misconduct.” They turn back to the paper. Their pen scratches louder across it. “You have allies in Night Vale, but no one likes to be blamed.”

They tear the page out of the notepad and pass it to Jon. “You don’t want to lose your allies, do you?”

Jon scowls. “You imply you have plans to hurt my assistants. You have no place to act offended when I’m suspicious of your motives.

“Not _plans,_ head archivist Sims, and certainly not mine. These are simple truths. I will not repeat myself. I act only as a messenger, but the way the events will unfold may diverge.”

Jon loses the rest of the conversation. A direct influence of whatever “patron” the angel serves? Possibly. He knows they must’ve talked more, because by the time he realizes he’s leaving, the shade now stretches well across the porch and a good meter out into the desert past it. He climbs down from the porch anyway, not wanting to press his luck with losing the memories of the first part of their “investigation”.

The angel has other plans.

“Oh and, head archivist Sims?”

Jon freezes, a half-step away from the porch. He turns part way back. 

“Be careful setting up the equipment,” the angel continues. “Don’t tread on the anchor.”

“How’s that?” Jon asks.

They regard him a moment. “What does a boat do when the crew feels like the fish are messing with the rope of their anchor?”

Jon’s brows furrow.

“They reel it in,” they answer for him, “and you will lose your chance.”

“What does that _mean?”_ His patience is wearing thin, and the vague quasi threats fray at his nerves.

“Your purpose was to listen. If you failed, then this is indicative of nothing more than your power as the archivist.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you have no more questions.” They step through the door and close it on their own words. “Goodbye, head archivist Sims.”

“Goodbye,” he says numbly. They glide into their house and shut the door behind them.

Jon stands on the sand for a few minutes afterwards, until the shadow stops stretching, interceded by the light of Josie’s house’s halo.

* * *

Elias doesn’t like that Erika told Jon about the institute’s patron. He’d been hoping to keep that a secret for just a bit longer. More than that, he’s disappointed in Jon, for not thinking to wonder if Erika may have been lying about their supposed “ignorance.” Even if they _had_ served a familiar entity, the Web is insidious with tricky wording, and a Stranger hides many things behind familiar expressions.

No bother. Jon won’t know what to do with the information about working for the Eye. It barely counts as a setback. More like a sidestep. Jon still has a long way to go, if he was so shaken up that he didn’t notice their conversation wasn’t finished yet.

Elias will have to keep a close eye on them, but he’d already been expecting as much.

* * *

Martin doesn’t hear Jon come in, but when he turns around at the feeling of being stared at, Jon’s standing there. Martin startles, and Jon flinches.

“Sorry!” Martin says. “I, uh— I didn’t realize you were there?” Is that rude? Did Jon think Martin was ignoring him?

Jon looks away. “Apologies. You seemed busy, and I didn’t wish to interrupt.”

Martin nods. He waits for Jon to bring up what he’d be interrupting _for._

“How was, uh—” Jon clears his throat. “How was it?”

“How was what?” As soon as Martin asks, he realizes the answer.

“Placing th—”

“Oh! Right, right. Um, uneventful? Which…” Martin huffs a slight laugh. “I guess that's the best you can ask for ‘round here, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

Martin feels as though that’s a natural conversation bookend, but Jon doesn’t make any move to leave. He’s not looking at Martin anymore, but he’s just… standing there.

“How was, uh,” Martin swallows the lump in his throat. “How was Ol— oh, uh, Josie’s?”

Jon finally looks back at him. His eyes cloud over.

“Enlightening,” he says. “I’ve learned where our point of interest is located.”

Sasha’s voice cuts through the air between them, and Martin startles. He must have really been concentrating, to have forgotten someone else was here too. “Really? That’s great! Where is it?”

Jon hesitates. His eyes break away from Martin, and he grabs something from his pocket, walking towards Sasha’s area. “I have a set of coordinates for you.” Jon places the paper on her desk. Sasha beams, picking it up. “We’re heading out to set up equipment first thing tomorrow.”

Jon walks back towards his office, whatever spell having taken over him seemingly broken.

Martin returns his focus back to his own desk, trying to remember what he’d been doing. The back of his neck prickles again with the feeling of being watched, but when Martin turns, the door to Jon’s office is closed.

* * *

The “anchor” they find at the angel’s coordinates lies in the middle of a half-buried cave standing alone in an otherwise endless sea of sand. In the middle of the dark sits a single bright beam of light in the shape of a raindrop hitting a pond: a “wide,” flat base only a meter across at max with a trail jutting up from its center, petering out halfway to the cave’s ceiling. The anchor seems so visually distinctive when the Magnus crew arrive that Jon cannot _believe_ that no one in town even bothered to bring it up.

“Might be a part of their normal,” Martin says, ever the diplomat.

“Might not’ve been able to see either,” Sasha notes, “like how Carlos said he can’t see angels.”

“I’d like to stop seeing it as soon as possible, too, so if we could hurry and finish up here that’d be awesome,” Tim says.

“Agreed.” Jon lets his pack fall to the ground.

“Don’t get near it,” Sasha reminds them.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious.” Tim cracks his knuckles.

“Any time, Sergeant Sarcasm.”

“Both of you focus,” Jon says. “This isn’t the time.”

Sasha’s “Right, sorry,” overlaps Tim’s “fair enough. Won’t happen again.”

Martin is eerily quiet, every muscle tense and movements slow enough that even Jon can’t help the thought that he’s being a bit ridiculous about it.

They get to work setting up various machines—sensors and data filters and things that beep in ways that Sasha indicates as being good things. The mountain of electronics make the weak pillar of light appear even smaller: a toothpick in a wedding cake.

As they set up, Jon can’t help but notice the marks of other people around the anchor. The walls appear to have been decorated, but at some point someone came in and hastily power washed them, spots of overlooked paint being the only proof of the offender’s crime. The floor is stone, but sand has been kicked in by wandering feet, piling around the disc of light.

The anchor is clearly supernatural, no doubt about it, but in some ways, it’s no more remarkable than anything else of note in Night Vale. One would have no idea just by looking that this is the thoroughfare through which eldritch monstrosities enter to feed on humanity’s fear.

Jon doesn’t let his assistants set up the equipment closest to the anchor, or, if he needs help, he watches them very closely as they work. They might not know about entities quite as intimately as Jon does, but he’s briefed them on what the angel said: it’s not inherently dangerous but they will need to be careful setting up the equipment and to not go in it.

Jon keeps one eye on his assistants and the other on the equipment. They’re all fraying from the overzealous precautions, but they understand the real threat to their lives and sanities enough that none of them call attention to it.

Sasha jogs out to the truck to get more duct tape. 

“Hey, Jon,” she calls on her way back in. Her voice echoes around the cave, but Jon knows, somehow, that it doesn’t touch the anchor. “There’s someone here to see you.”

Jon straightens, looking over the control panel he was working on. “Who could possibly be asking for me right now?”

Sasha shrugs. “Said their name is Erika?”

Martin whips his head to Jon. “That’s an angel.”

“What?”

“All of the angels are named Erika.”

Jon sighs. “Send them away.”

“They say it’s important.”

Jon groans.

“Fine,” he slams the wrench on the top of the control panel and whirls around. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll have it ready by the time you’re done,” Tim says, clapping him on the shoulder as he passes.

“I can get th—” Martin starts.

“No need. I’ve got it.”

He will _not_ let that thing near his assistants, especially Martin, after the way it spoke the other day.

Jon stomps his way out of the miniature cave, and with the absence of anything else surrounding them, the angel is easy to spot. They don’t look like the angel from yesterday—this one is white, and the dark light radiating from them paints their skin ever so slightly gray—but they are undoubtedly another angel.

They frown. “My name is Erika,” they say.

“Good for you. What're you doing here?" Jon asks.

“Finishing yesterday’s interrogation.”

Jon narrows his eyes. “Y—”

“We share memories, head archivist Sims. I didn’t tell you what a ritual is, when we met the other day.”

Jon’s stomach coils. He glances back at the cave. “Do you have to right now? We’re—”

“Yes. It’s important.”

Jon sighs. He crosses his arms. “Fine,” he says, “but make it quick.”

“You have to ask me.”

Jon scowls. He’d tell them off, but playing by their rules seems to be the fastest way to finish this and get back. “What is a ritual?”

“A ritual is when a servant of an entity holds a ceremony in honor of their patron. The point of a ritual is to widen the anchor into a proper channel, changing the fabric of the host’s universe and dragging an entity through into the servant’s universe—in this case, your world. There are forces at work to ensure that these rituals do not succeed, but these are ultimately passive and rely on a lack of understanding, something your employer acts in direct defiance of.”

Jon takes a few steps back. Something in his chest is buzzing, raising alarm bells.

“Why are you telling me this _right now?”_

“I just told you. There are forces at work to ensure that no ritual is successful,” they say. They check their wrist. There are freckles on their arm, arranged in a watch. Their arm hair keeps the time. “And right now, in London, Jane Prentiss is in a series of tunnels under your archives, attempting to corrode—”

 _“Tim!”_ Martin’s scream cuts through Jon’s thoughts like a hot knife through Styrofoam.

Jon’s running before he realizes it. There’s a pillar of light where the anchor was, growing brighter and brighter. Tim’s silhouette is backing away but not nearly fast enough. Suddenly, Martin’s there, breaking through the curtain of light, and Tim’s propelled backwards from Martin’s outstretched arm, and— and—

When the smoke clears, when the light dies down enough for Jon and Sasha to see, there’s nothing left in front of them except a stretch of desert that doesn’t seem to end.

* * *

The parts of It which they call “Beholding” aren’t meant to judge. It watches, It records, It does not interfere in any other way than through the act of observation. Other parts of It, however, _are_ capable of opinion, and It does not _like_ intruders.

(This is hardly his fault.)

There are certain places where certain things should never be. Humans know that, and even It cannot and should not be found crossing particular lines.

The anchor is not meant to be tread upon, but It does recognize an act of malice and an act of selfless bravery.

Perhaps it would’ve been easier for poor Martin if It couldn’t.

(He’s grateful that It does, if the alternative is being replaced or joined.)

And now, like the myth of spiders and sleepers, It has swallowed. Unlike Its usual meals (and despite his wishes) his eyes stay open.

All of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ask not for whom the bell tolls. For the last time, it's an hourly thing. We're all getting really tired of having to repeat ourselves, and it's making it hard to hang out with you.
> 
> Chapter titled after the [song by Jack Stauber!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4lNq4nhdDQ)


	4. Emelina, Right or Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of an incident, there is grieving and there is recovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ THANK YOU AS ALWAYS TO MY WONDERFUL FRIEND COLE FOR BETAING!!!](https://twitter.com/bibophilophile)
> 
> Aim for the moon because even if you miss, you’ll no longer have to hear family members ask what you’re planning to do with your life. Sound doesn’t travel in space. Welcome to Night Vale.

Sasha is taking the “anchor incident” as they’ll take to calling it, about as well as can be imagined, which really isn’t well enough for her.

“It all happened so fast” is such a stupid fucking cliche, but it really, really had. One second, Tim is fixing the access panel back on top of the controls, and there’s this great hiss, and the room’s suddenly so fucking  _ loud  _ and  _ bright,  _ and Sasha hadn’t realized Martin could move so fast, and then the only things left in the stupid wasteland of a desert were her and Jon, the truck sitting patiently in the back to keep from interrupting.

That’s it. A hiss and some light, and suddenly her best friend and her terribly nice coworker just… just  _ poof! _

Jon doesn’t know how to drive. Sasha knows the basics, but hasn’t in four years. The driver’s seat needs to be pulled back and lowered, but Sasha doesn’t panic. Not like Jon. They need to get to safety first.

It takes them twice as long to get back from the middle of bumfuck nowhere into Night Vale proper than it did going out. Sasha knows, without having paid attention to anything other than the radio on the ride up, that it’s because she refuses to speed. Sasha does not panic—not like Jon is—because they are in a moving vehicle, and they need someone to get them there safely.

She must have dropped Jon off at some point, because when she kills the engine in her temporary housing’s parking lot, Jon isn’t riding shotgun. She would almost believe that he’d been— except, no. The smell of Tim’s aftershave has been dominated and overshadowed by Jon’s cologne and the sweat of working on machines for hours in desert heat.

She texts him anyway. She’s in a car in the parking lot, which isn’t Safety, so she does not panic. Not like how Jon looks in the “selfie” he sends to confirm he’s okay.

In her temporary housing, door locked, she starts to wonder when the panic will come. She’s safe now. She should be panicking. Reacting. Something.

She reheats a lasagna for dinner. Only half of it gets eaten: it’s not portioned to be a solo meal. She does not panic. She watches recorded episodes of some cooking show she’s only ever heard of.

It’s Tim’s toothbrush on her sink that does it. 

She stays in a motel that night instead.

* * *

Here is a conversation that Sasha James, in her not-panic, does not remember.

“I  _ told _ them,” Jon is saying, picking at his cuticles with his nails—his teeth when that doesn’t work. He is already bleeding from four fingers, the taste of iron spotting his tongue. “I  _ told _ them. How hard is it for Martin to listen to  _ simple—” _

Sasha slams her fist hard enough into the dashboard to break the glass.

She thinks:  _ You weren’t there. _ She grips the steering wheel hard enough, it might bend in half. She thinks:  _ Tim didn’t see it getting— it got bigger, Jon.  _ Her ring finger is broken. She won’t notice for two weeks.  _ Martin tried to push him out. _

But Sasha’s attention is split between: not panicking, remembering how to drive, and nursing her throbbing knuckles while also keeping both hands on the wheel. She doesn’t say any of that. Jon is silent for the rest of the drive anyway.

* * *

Jon calls Sasha, and It watches him tell her, while seated in the remote laboratory, not to come into work and to take as long as she needs.

(Jon’s the restless type. Downtime stirs at Jon, mixes up the carefully organized and labeled parts of Jon’s thoughts. He knew that, even before Jon started showing those hidden parts to him.)

The lab is quiet. To Jon, it is no longer the quiet following the final notes of a song. It’s more like the quiet of Its archives. 

He hadn’t realized how oppressive, demanding the lack of something—even distracting idle chatter—could be. The lack of distraction lets his mind wander, bringing forth the ugly thoughts that he could normally push down from Its wandering gaze.

For the second time in Jon’s life that he’s the one who walks away. Once again, it should have been him.

(Again?)

Jon calls Elias.

* * *

A ritual of the Corruption in the tunnels under his Institute? Elias clicks his tongue. Really, what has he ever done to be on the receiving end of such ire?

No matter. That can be dealt with as it comes. She won’t find Smirke’s architecture as easy to pollute as she might think, though he’s not too keen to let her continue trying. She might meet their little… “rat problem” down there before Elias gets the chance to pay his dues forward  _ personally.  _ He presses a button to call his receptionist. “Rosie?”

“Yes, Mr. Bouchard?”

“Would you do me a favor and contact the Met for me? Tell them Elias Bouchard needs their finest for a search-and-rescue.”

“Right away, sir.”

He likes Rosie. She’s such a doll. It will take quite a while of preparing for Prentiss to make her real move. Meanwhile, Elias has plenty of aces to line his sleeves with.

First things first, Elias has some deliveries to sign for. He thanks her and ends the connection before she responds. He gets up from his desk and leaves to meet the delivery men at the door.

* * *

One week, two weeks, one month later, and Sasha hasn’t gone back to the lab yet. She’s not sure she could handle the quiet.

It’s a shame, really. Sasha had been starting to like working for Jon. Sure, he could be rude as hell, but Tim was there. And Martin. And Jon seemed to appreciate her work. And, God,  _ anything _ was better than bloody fucking  _ artefact storage. _

But at least in artefact storage, she’d never had to watch her best friend  _ poof. _

What are they even still  _ doing _ here? Their job was to 

Jon calls her after her post-sleep shower, at half-past three in the afternoon. She’s missed her phone buzzing twice.

“Elias said he needs someone to report back and—”

“I’ll do it.”

He sounds relieved, almost, when he says, “Thank you, Sasha.”

* * *

Carlos has taken to bringing paperwork over from the main lab to work on them in the bullpen.

Jon… appreciates the gesture. It’s been lonely, working by himself in the lab, and it’s easier to lose track of the time. He understands why Sasha couldn’t return back to work, but it’s been… a while, since he’s had coworkers beside him. A month, at least, if he thinks hard enough on it to remember.

Sasha insisted on taking a flight out from Los Angeles and driving up there herself. To clear her head before having to recount the whole story to Elias. Jon thinks the idea’s sound, but he wishes the execution were a little different. He doesn’t like the idea of her driving in her mental state, but it’s not his place to pry. He is her boss, after all. And, like she so helpfully pointed out, he wasn’t too concerned about her driving when it was literally minutes after the fact and brought him home.

But Carlos is an ideal office mate. He’s focused, quiet and intense as he works in a way Jon wouldn’t have guessed. To see him with Martin and the others, Jon would have thought he’d be more lax about his work. He’d tried to talk to Jon, when he first started working alongside him.

“Cecil is better than me with… word… stuff.” Carlos had waved his hand. “Probably no surprise, but if you think it’ll help.”

The pity was not lost on Jon. The thought of pouring his heart out at the first man to offer would leave him gagging if his mind hadn’t already pulled away from the memories with the quickness of a finger laid on a hot stove. “Ah, I appreciate it, but I’m—”

Carlos held up his hands. “Say no more. I get it.” He went back to his paperwork. “Just know it’s an open offer. Any time. You have my number, right?”

“From when your key was the only copy, yes.”

Carlos had made that offer a month ago, but now that Jon thinks about it… How long ago was it that Jon hadn’t even had a key to the remote lab? Jon finds himself doing math in his head. One week setting up, one week finding ideal spots for the sensors, a month collecting data and canvassing… three months? At least?

A horn honks from outside, and Carlos and Jon jump in tandem.

Carlos huffs a laugh, hand over his heart. “That time already?”

Jon threads his fingers and stretches, cracking his knuckles over his head, spine arched. “Seems like it.” He picks up his pen again.

Jon gets two lines into his letter—penned to a Mr. Jeremy Wallace on his encounter with the Vast—when he realizes the scratching of a nib across off-white bristol smooth cardstock is the sole noise in the room.

Carlos is wringing the strap of his shoulder bag when Jon looks up.

“Heading out?” Jon asks him.

“Uh, yeah. I just— I’ve been meaning to. Um.” His mouth twists.

Jon caps and places his piston fountain pen on the desk. “Yes?”

“Cecil and I would— we’d love to have you over for dinner.” Carlos’s eyes cut to the paper in front of Jon. “If you’re not too busy,” he amends.

Jon’s brows furrow. “I… er—”

“It’s last minute, so it’s okay if you have plans and can’t make it. Really, I’ve been meaning to invite you over for the last week, but I just couldn’t find a good time.”

Jon hasn’t really gone out since the incident. The thing is: this isn’t the first time he’s heard of people disappearing out of thin air. It happened with that one— with the skydiving bloke. If Jon can just figure out the nature of what took Tim and Martin, he can figure out how to get them back. He’s just… run into a bit of trouble, given that  _ everything _ in Night Vale is so strangely bizarre that two bodies disappearing into the ether apparently doesn’t warrant so much as a batted eyelash.

On the one hand, he really should keep working. On the other, he really is exhausted. Without any assistants, he’s had to do all the legwork himself, and Elias has been less than kind in regards to his workload. 

Usually, Jon would suspect such an invitation. People don’t  _ invite _ Jon to things. He works very hard to maintain a professional distance, and as a child, verbal invites were often met with… less than kind reactions when Jon accepted them in all seriousness.

But Carlos just looks so apprehensive about something as simple as a dinner party, Jon can’t help but find sincerity in the words. He could use the break—a chance to let his mind rest and possibly find new avenues to pursue, so to speak.

“That…” Jon tastes the words before he speaks them, finding them agreeable, “would be very generous of you. Thank you.”

Carlos’s face breaks out in surprise, hands stilling. “Is that a yes?”

Jon nods before he can read too far into it. He stands and grabs his coat off the back of his chair.

“Great! That’s— We’d love that! Oh, do you need a minute to get your things?”

“No, no.” Jon folds his coat over his arm and grabs his own messenger bag off the floor, hoisting the strap over his head. “This is it.” He turns and starts towards the door without looking back. “Shall we?”

Carlos rushes to catch up. Outside, Jon turns to lock the lab door. A silver car glitters from the street. “Uh— Let me go tell him while you’re wrapping up here. Gimme a minute.”

Jon finishes with the lock. He turns and leans back against the wall as Carlos finishes lightly jogging to the car. The windows roll left, and Carlos leans in to talk to the driver.

Jon feels eyes on him. Probably Cecil’s, given that Carlos is explaining.

Jon grabs at his elbow and feels suddenly very silly, standing all by himself like a child waiting for his playmate’s parent’s approval before setting foot in the backyard. What does he think he’s doing, imposing on what was probably an offer only made out of some impulsive spike of pity? “Meaning to for the last week” could’ve easily been a fib meant to cover the suddenness of it, given how nervous Carlos had been.

Carlos leans away from the economical silver car and waves Jon over with a big smile.

Jon holds back a frown, now that he can see someone looking. He supposes that if it weren’t too late before, it is now. Jon makes short work of the pathway up to the road.

“You’re in the back with me,” Carlos says, opening the door for him. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“Why would I?” Jon unburdens his bag from his shoulders and slides into the car, moving to the far side to give Carlos room.

“Hi, Jon,” Cecil says, making eye contact through the rear view. “Glad to have you with us tonight.”

“Thank you for inviting me.”

There’s a babble, and for a moment, Jon thinks that’s Cecil’s version of “you’re welcome,” but then Cecil turns and holds an arm out to the passenger seat, and—

There’s a booster seat there, in the front by Cecil. A boy, no older than a toddler, gurgles at Jon, grabbing at Cecil’s hand.

Cecil must see him looking. “I just picked him up from daycare,” he explains.

“Is he yours?” Jon asks, a little breathless.

Cecil chuckles from the front seat. Jon’s face heats.

“It’s rude to assume,” he says, unable to keep the defensiveness from his tone.

“And unscientific,” Carlos agrees, and Jon startles. There’s the telltale  _ click _ of a seat belt fastening, and Jon makes to grab for his own. “But yes, this is our son, Esteban. Esteban, I’d like to introduce you to my colleague: Jonathan Sims! He works in the laboratory, like Papa!” Carlos leans towards Esteban, who’s grinning and grabbing for him.

“Carlos insists on using big words with him,” Cecil says, an old joke crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“Excuse  _ me _ that  _ I _ care about enriching our son’s lexicon during these critical periods of his life.”

Jon hadn’t known they had a son. Hell, he hadn’t even known they’d been  _ married _ until Martin told him. He’s known Carlos for three months.

He’d been working with the others nearly every weekday for a year.  _ Longer, _ even, if you count their mutual employment in the research department ahead of that.

If Tim or Martin were— if Jon’s search for the cause were to prove fruitless, would he even know who to contact to notify the next-of-kin? What if it’d been Sasha?

How does he not know a thing about any of his employees?

No, that’s not true. He knows… He knows Sasha enjoys reading about Greco-Roman antiquity and her favorite game to play on the archive computers is Minesweeper. He knows Martin’s a writer, he likes jigsaw puzzles and to sing, and he wears old t-shirts and sweatpants to sleep. He also has a suspicion that Martin was either forced into parapsychology by whoever paid for his education or that parapsychology introduced him to the scenarios that made him so afraid of their work, as Martin seems very skittish about the topic. He knows Tim doesn’t like to sit with both chair legs on the ground and keeps a more coordinated closet than anyone Jon’s ever known.

But what does all that really  _ mean _ if he can’t even keep track of something as simple as a colleague’s status as a  _ father. _ Something that affects his entire life. Has Jon even talked to any of them outside of work or—that one time—sheltering in place?

Jon nearly jumps out of his skin at a light touch on his arm.

“Sorry,” Carlos says. “I— you weren’t answering, so I got worried, but I should have asked.”

“It’s quite alright,” Jon says. “I was just…”

“Thinking?” Carlos prompts.

Jon nods.

“A scientist always is,” Cecil says. It sounds like it’s supposed to be an old joke, softened for an audience that won’t get it. Jon huffs a polite laugh.

Cecil keeps his car radio on some sort of NPR equivalent, and in the silence, the soft cadence of the newscaster marches through. Jon isn’t surprised for the preference, but he would have thought that they’d play music for the baby.

“It’s a really short drive,” Carlos says. “We should be there soon.”

The NPR-like host gets a couple sentences out. He’s talking about an unnamed “new release”, which he feels isn’t as good as the author’s last.

“Anyway,” Cecil says, tone dipping and rising to pick the conversational thread off the floor, “the last article you put on my desk, Carlos, said that the important thing was to give him conversational turns.”

Carlos glances at Jon again before joining in. “Yes, it did, and you’re interrupting him.”

“Esteban doesn’t mind! Do you, Stefon?” Cecil leans over, listening. Esteban babbles at him.

Jon feels his intrusion into their routine like a wine stain on a white suit. Something to be covered up and minded while everyone else pretends they don’t see it out of politeness.

He closes his eyes against the thought and leans his head back against the car seat cushion. Now is not the time to wallow. He can do that later, in the lab, where there’s no one to give him pitying looks when he snaps out of it.

The conversation around Jon in the car sounds lighthearted by the tone, but Jon doesn’t really listen to it. He figures they’ll ask him questions if they want him to talk, and he’ll need to save his socializing energy to make it through dinner.

The house Cecil pulls up to is literally identical to all the other houses on the street. There’s no numbering system as far as Jon can see, unless the plates are more hidden. The other houses have familiar economical silver cars in front of the garages, and when Cecil parks in the driveway, their house does too.

Jon runs his hand down his face. Whatever. Not worth worrying about right now. He can ask about it later.

They all pile out of the car. Carlos holds the door open for Jon, and Cecil carefully unbuckles and lifts Estebon from his booster seat. Carlos leads the way to the door.

He pauses while fishing his keys out of his bag.

“Oh, uh—” Carlos turns back to Jon. “Are you okay with dogs?”

They stare at each other, Carlos’s eyes getting more worried by the second.

“You have a dog?” Jon asks weakly.

“We can put her outside,” Cecil offers. Jon shakes his head.

“I like dogs,” he says. Dogs are fine. He prefers cats, honestly, but his first set of flatmates in uni had a scottish terrier that he’d come to love. “I just…” his eyes trace the grout between sidewalk squares. He wonders if any of his assistants has a pet.

“Don’t worry about it,” Cecil says.

“So you  _ are  _ okay with dogs? Just to clarify?” Carlos asks.

“Yes.” Jon nods. “Yes, dogs are good.”

It’s a good thing they are, too. No sooner has Carlos opened the door than a mass of white tuft barrels itself into Jon’s stomach. Jon wheezes, staggering back. The dog lands on the cement of the patio, wiggling with its entire body and tail wagging wildly, before jumping up on Jon with its front two paws again.

“H— no, Aubergine! Down!” Carlos scolds. He grabs for Aubergine’s collar, pulling the dog back. “I’m so sorry, Jon, she—”

“It’s quite alright.” Jon straightens his tie absent-mindedly. “No harm done.”

Cecil ruffles Aubergine’s fur as he passes, slipping between Carlos and the door.

Their home is… It’s domestic, in a way Jon realizes he hadn’t been expecting. There are toys littered on every surface, and the stains of inexperienced hands fumbling, and places he can tell without touching are sticky. Their home, just from looking, has a history. Stories.

Jon wonders what he keeps in his flat back in London.

“Sorry about the mess,” Carlos says, crouching and picking up the larger clutter. “It’s hard to keep it organized nowadays.”

“It’s no bother.”

Esteban leans away from Cecil for Jon, hands grabbing at the air.

“He’s friendly,” Cecil explains, regripping to steady his child.

“Gets it from his dad,” Carlos teases.

“Pairs well with his curiosity from his papa. Loves to meet new people.” Cecil moves towards the hallway, a steadying hand on Esteban’s back. “Let me put him down for his nap and then I’ll get started with dinner.”

“C’mon,” Carlos waves Jon forward with his hand. “While he’s playing Dad, I’ll give you the tour.”

Jon takes a deep breath in, lets it out.

“I’d like that,” he says, stepping forward to follow after him. “Thank you.”

* * *

The door to Elias’s office is heavy—real oak—and Elias takes great pleasure in the way the hinges groan with its weight.

The first officer who enters positively  _ reeks _ of the Hunt. If her partner has been marked, which she likely has given her profession, the entities she’s witnessed are masked by the cloying presence of No Escape Where It Cannot Follow.

Honestly, sometimes Elias thinks the world conspires to make clairvoyance useless. It’s simply too easy.

“Please, come in; have a seat.” Elias stands and gestures to a couple of chairs he’s moved up from the library for them. He offers his hand. “I’m Elias Bouchard, the current director of this Institute.”

“I’d rather stand,” Officer Alice “Daisy” Tonner says. Officer Basira Hussain moves further into the room, and they shake across his desk.

“Basira Hussain, and the friendly one’s my partner, D— Alice Tonner.”

Basira doesn’t trust him. Clever. Physical contact heightens Elias’s vision, and he can see now that Basira Hussain holds a very unique position as an  _ unmarked _ section 31 officer. She has Seen—her eyes hold so very many stories—but she has yet to be well and truly scarred by her witnessing.

Fascinating.

“Um,” she starts, their hands still clasped, “you can let go now.”

Elias decides he likes this one.

“Of course, my apologies. The disappearance of my employees has left a burdening weight on my thoughts, as of late. Please forgive me.” He lets her go, and sits at his own seat. “It’s good to meet you, Officer Tonner, Officer Hussain.”

Daisy grunts.

“So what seems to be the problem?” Officer Hussain asks.

“It seems that someone has been doing a little digging—”

“In as few words as possible, please,” Daisy interjects.

Elias smiles. He brings the memory of her partner’s blank face on that fateful rainy day to the forefront of her mind and finds solace in the way her brows flinch into a furrow. “Of course,” he says. “A couple of my archival employees have discovered a series of tunnels under their workplace and have been missing for a number of days down there.”

“Missing persons aren’t really our department,” Daisy says, leaning her shoulders against the wallpaper. Officer Hussain turns in her chair, and although he can’t see the look she gives her partner from Elias’s eyes, he nearly smirks when he sees it from Daisy’s perspective.

“And if I told you there’s a monster down there with them who  _ will _ kill on-sight?” Elias offers.

Daisy perks up from her Wall. “That might be a different story.”

Elias smiles. “She calls herself a witch. The woman’s been made into a hive, with worms burrowing into her. If you come into direct contact, they’ll do the same to you, but CO2—such as that of fire extinguishers—kills them.”

He does not tell her: there are  _ two  _ monsters. Because he can’t risk a special delivery not being made. Jon isn’t here for the Corruption, which is a shame, but the Stranger can be a different story.

So Elias sends Alice “Daisy” Tonner and her partner Basira Hussain into the tunnels, armed with CO2 and just enough knowledge to fish out his employee.

* * *

“But I try to handwrite letters where I can, for the practice,” Jon tells Carlos. “I have a gorgeous ream of natural-colored cardstock for personal use back in my flat.”

Carlos nods.

Jon has been speaking of his passion for the last seven minutes and forty-three seconds. There is no fear, here, but It cannot stop looking.

(The familiar enthusiasm is the first comfort he’s known in a month. This is not the first time he’s heard the words, but he struggles to steep himself in them again.)

“Dinner’s ready,” Cecil announces, rounding the corner from the kitchen to the living room.

Cecil freezes at the threshold when he sees It. His brows furrow, and he tilts his head.

“Oh!” Jon checks his watch. “Was I speaking that whole time?” He hefts himself up from the couch. “I can help set the table.”

He is surprised at how easy it was to speak with Carlos. He knows Martin spent a good deal of time associating with them, but he’d just assumed it was for old time’s sake. He’s finding Cecil and Carlos genuinely delightful. And then, of course, when Cecil left to start on dinner, Carlos had offered to play a conversation game, which had only marginally upset Jon.

Carlos takes his turn, talking about his work. Jon assumed it would be awkward, but there’s something… easy to hearing Carlos talk about science. He’d forgotten what loving ones’ job had looked like, with everything else going on.

Carlos goes to fetch silverware, and Cecil smiles at Jon knowingly.

“Hypnotic, isn’t he?” he asks, with a wink. Jon recognizes the phrasing from Martin’s spot on NVCR, but it really does fit too well to shy away from the memory.

It tries to pull Its eyes away again. There is no  _ fear _ here, and there are so many places for It to feed in Night Vale.

(Jon fumbles with the bottle of wine that Carlos hands over, and he would smile, if he had the muscles.)

Cecil presents the dinner he’d prepared sans recipe. Jon finishes his plate within ten minutes.

(Jon isn’t eating enough. Honestly, he isn’t surprised—had expected as much—but he is… disappointed.)

Cecil keeps looking up and making Eye-contact. He’s never seen It act this way. He’s worried there is fear here. There  _ should _ be, if It is present, but Its soon-to-be incumbent is a stubborn one.

“So,” Carlos begins between bites. “I haven’t heard much of anything about your work.”

(Carlos and Jon are very similar. He’s glad Jon has someone around who can empathize with everything.)

Cecil glances up at It over the table, a slight frown passing across his eyes.

Jon frowns. “Martin hasn’t told you about it?”

(He has.)

“He has! But he’s in an assistant position. What does the head archivist do?”

“Ah, I suppose that’s fair.” Jon adjusts in his seat. “I’m afraid it’s not too dissimilar from what Martin’s told you, especially now that I’ve taken over the duties of my assistants.”

Cecil’s eyebrows raise. He attempts to ignore Its presence, but finds it hard. His worry on Its presence is a type of fear, technically, but approximately as sustainable as a mint. “All of them?”

“Yes, those not present. Doing the workload of four by myself.”

Carlos frowns.

“Well,” Jon corrects, “three, I suppose. Martin’s degree only went so far, considering we deal with events more and victims less.”

(He would wince if he had muscles to do the motion with.)

“Degree?” Carlos’s brow furrows.

“Yes, in parapsychology.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing, I’m just happy for him! I hadn’t known he’d gotten to go back to school.”

(Now that the conversation has turned, he tries to make It leave, but his fear is immediate and concentrated in a way that most of Its meals aren’t after they’ve been transferred through the anchor. It holds him there, and It makes him watch the budding suspicion on Jon’s features.)

“What do you mean by ‘go back to school’?” Jon asks.

Carlos raises his eyebrows. He looks between Cecil and Jon. “He… well, he dropped out before I even came to London. I’m just surprised that’s all. I’m glad he found a way to go to school while everything else was happening.”

“Everything else?”

Carlos realizes there’s something he’s missing, and his eyes fall back to his plate. “Not really my place to say. Just that, while I was there, his mom wasn’t well, and he was her primary caretaker.”

There are facts in the shape of puzzle pieces in Jon’s head. He will figure out later how to rotate them into a picture. For now, he thinks: no wonder he kept such a good eye out for them.

(It holds him here, and… He cannot help but wonder why He thought this could turn out well for Him.)

* * *

“Would you like to stay the night?” Carlos offers. “We have a guest room and extra—”

“I couldn’t impose—”

“Nonsense. You’re not imposing at all.”

The truth is: Carlos sees a lot of himself in Jon, and Carlos knows what it’s like to find yourself stranded and alone in an unfamiliar place. That was the start of seven long years separated from Cecil and his home, and Carlos wants to be the friend he wishes he’d had in that wasteland otherworld.

The reality is: Carlos is a parent now—a good one—and it’s what he’d want if this happened to someone he loves. Carlos’s first instinct is to “learn” and his second is “provide” be it answers or help.

(But that’s not really fair to Carlos. Jon needs help, and the whole reason Carlos became a scientist in the first place is to help people. It’s just Carlos’s nature. He’s happy that Jon has Carlos and Cecil right now.)

The truth is that Jon is unused to kindness. The reality: he doesn’t trust what he doesn’t feel he’s earned. 

(Oh…)

In Jon’s head, accepting their invitation had been a moment of weakness, and while he’s glad that worked out, he would  _ not _ be pressing his luck more than he already has.

“Do you want us to drive you at least?” Cecil asks, seeing the trepidation on Jon’s face.

“No, thank you. The air will be good for my head.”

Carlos nods, eyes searching. “If you’re sure.”

Jon leaves, and Cecil takes Carlos’s hand in his.

“It’ll be okay,” he says. Carlos looks at him.

“It was here the whole time, wasn’t It?” he asks. It’s rhetorical, and all three and a half presences in the room know it. He follows up with: “Do you think this was a bad idea?”

“It was a great idea. I think it really helped.” Cecil makes Eye-contact again. “There’s something different about It right now. I can’t put my finger on why.”

(Cecil is Its voice, but Cecil needs instruction on what to say, the same as any voice. Station Management is faithful enough to keep Its secrets.)

“It’s all gonna be okay,” he promises.

“Do you know that, or do you  _ know _ that?”

Cecil looks down at the floor.

“Hard to say.”

* * *

On Saturdays, Jon rewards himself. His Saturday alarm is set for 7 and not his workday’s 6. This makes him especially irate when he’s abruptly and rudely awoken, at  _ four _ in the morning, by a call from an unknown number with a London area code.

“What?” he snaps into the receiver.

“Well,  _ someone’s _ grouchy?” The voice is definitely Sasha’s.

“And then, in the background, he hears Martin’s familiar cadence say: “Well what time is it there? He might’ve been sleeping.”

Jon bolts upright. “Was that Martin?” he asks.

“There’s our early bird!” Sasha’s grin is audible. “And Tim’s here too. W— hey!”

There’s some sounds Jon can’t place on the other end.

“Hello, bossman,” Tim lilts. “Didja miss us?”

“Tim,” he breathes. Later, Jon will blame the early morning for the embarrassing sincerity in his voice when he says, “it’s good to hear from you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's proverb: there are only two types of people who say "definitely". People who know they're right and people who are only sure they're right. Be careful which one you listen to.


	5. Right Here Waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two assistants and an insurgent return to Night Vale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Thank you so much Cole you were so right about splitting this chapter into two the pacing's way better this way.](https://twitter.com/bibophilophile)
> 
> Imagine a carton of eggs. No, the bigger pack. No, not that one it’s too close to the front. No, that one’s all cracked— look, just— I’ll get it. I don’t know why I even bother. Welcome to Night Vale.

Sasha, Martin, and Tim have a loose end or two in London to tie off, including putting together some luggage which Elias is shipping over.

Jon counts the days. To himself. Wouldn’t do to appear too eager for his assistants back. It would be unprofessional, and worse, they’d never let him hear the end of it if they knew. Carlos helps by crossing the days off on his own work calendar. “Less conflicting evidence,” he says with a wink.

Jon should do something special for when they get back. That’s what— what friends do, right? They celebrate safe returns?

“I think that’s a great idea!” Carlos says from across the research table they’re seated at. He sips from his mug of coffee. They don’t look up from their work while they talk, which suits Jon more than fine. Jon  _ dreads _ the many social intricacies of eye-contact, and it’s nice to not worry over those. “Would you throw it in here? The main lab’s bigger, if you’d like to use that.”

“Here is better. It’s more… ours.”

“Fair enough.” Carlos hums the electricity of a lightbulb going off. “Do you wanna come with me to Ralph’s during lunch? Cecil was saying we ran out of apple sauce, and I was gonna restock on some of Esteban’s snacks. Fun fact about parenthood science has recently discovered: you’re always running out of  _ something.” _

Jon chuckles. “I’d like that, yes. I could start planning party food.”

“Don’t tell my researchers you’re cooking for you and yours. I always just order pizza.”

“I’d thought gluten was banned.”

“Not gluten, just wheat and related by-products. Big Rico’s pizza makes do.”

Jon chuckles. “Right, of course. My mistake.”

* * *

The day of the celebration arrives, and Carlos, Its Voice, their child, their dog, and Jon wait patiently. Carlos is invited because he has been so desperately worried. Its Voice is invited mostly because he helped Jon cook for the others, and he knows the moment they cross from their universe to the in-between of Night Vale’s borders. Their child is invited because it is hard to find a babysitter you can trust.

(Aubergine’s there because she’s such a good girl! Yes, she is! And who doesn’t love a dog?)

The archivist’s assistants return is to Night Vale what popping one’s back is to someone seated for a long stretch of time. It welcomes them with a sigh. A place for everything, and everything returns to Its place.

They arrive at the remote lab in a moving truck, the side emblazoned with the moving company’s name: Shark Bait Bru-Haul Haul©. Tim, in yet another fit of delightful glee over operating a big rig, pulls the horn and holds it. He watches Jon approach the vehicle, still screaming a middle G note. He knocks on the window forcefully with the knuckles of his pointer and middle, and Tim rolls it down with the horn still going, beaming at Jon with mischievous glee.

“You came out awful fast,” he yells over the honking. Behind him, Sasha says something incomprehensible, and she tries to free the chain from Tim’s grip to no avail.

A weight falls from Jon’s shoulders, even as Tim shoves an overnight bag into his arms and recruits him to help unpack.

(It holds His gaze on the assistants clamoring into the lab and through the beginning of the Welcome Back party. When He sees the Not-Them—an insurgent in an all-too-familiar skin—It drinks in His despair and grief and fear all at once. He is Its gourmet feast, and He is  _ delicious. _ He struggles to hold Himself together despite it all.)

Sasha speaks—

(Who is that?)

Sasha speaks with Martin.

(Oh.)

She updates him about the status of the anchor after he and Tim disappeared: that it’s missing, but evidence of its presence still has a grip over Night Vale. Her words come slower than usual. If Martin notices, he doesn’t say anything, but—of course—he doesn’t notice.

Tim’s been carrying the stuff that can be put out of the way into the basement, per Carlos’s permission. Jon, Carlos, and Its Voice have been moving the rest of it into the remote lab.

“That’s the last of the boxes,” Tim announces, holding the door for Jon with his foot. Jon sets the box lightly on the floor. “Now we can finally get this party started.”

Jon straightens and cracks his back. “Right, it’s good to see you all—”

“Jon!” Martin starts with a wide grin, and he steps forward and crushes Jon into a hug. “It’s so good to see you!”

(Jon hates sudden contact. He can see it in the stiffness of Jon’s back, the careful tension in Jon’s shoulders, and the way Jon’s head is tilted to minimize as much texture from his cheeks as possible.)

Jon lets Martin hold him. He counts “one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand”, and starts to extricate himself on four.

“I missed you!” Martin says.

“Apparently,” Sasha says.

“Hey!”

(Why isn’t anyone saying anything? That doesn’t even look like—)

“Now, now.” Tim throws an arm over Martin’s shoulders. “Cut the man some slack. He’s allowed to miss who he wants. Even Jon. We’ve been gone for what feels like forever.”

Not-Them, as Adelard Dekker so literally named it, has never been to Night Vale, of course, but the Stranger shares memories between Its minions. Maybe that is a kind of forever.

(Why can’t Jon see that isn’t—)

But, of course, He knows why. He is just as close to Its Stranger as He is to Its Eye. He knows the Not-Them and how it works, and He cycles: denial straight to acceptance, because It feeds on all the stages interim with pleasure and gusto.

(He wants Not-Them to get  _ away,  _ but He especially wants Not-Them to stop  _ wearing her skin.) _

* * *

Their party lasts well into the night—long past when Jon had planned, but he’s not complaining. The companionship, after a month of dread and quasi-mourning, is a welcome reprieve, even if it sears his skin with each of Tim and Martin’s casual touches. He bears the overstimulation, as Jon supposes they’re more than deserving of such grounding comfort.

He never would have pegged Martin for the casual touching type. He really  _ hadn’t  _ known a thing about his assistants, had he?

Well, thankfully, he has time to get to know them all now.

He finds himself staring at them, all throughout the affair, trying to memorize the look of them now.

Tim looks different than before the incident. He has a shock of snow-white hair on his right (Jon’s left) side of his temple, and the shoulder under it has a starburst of scar tissue, visible to either side of his “I flexed so hard the sleeves tore off” tank top.

Martin’s got smile marks at the corners of his lips and a face gaunter with age. He’s got bulk to his frame, and his hair is straight and silver much like Tim’s affected follicles. His skin is freckled all over—as though sunburned and recovered a hundred times over.

Sasha, of course, looks exactly the same as she left. Jon doesn’t even think to question her looks, for how much she’s exactly as he remembers.

“Jon, Jon—” Tim throws his arm across Jon’s shoulders, shocking him from his reverie. “Why didn’t you tell us? We could’ve— I would’ve disappeared  _ way _ sooner if it meant food like this.”

Sasha partially sobers. “Don’t joke about that.”

Tim’s face slackens, and he reaches out to cup Sasha’s cheek. “Sorry,” he says, whisper-soft, “Won’t happen twice.”

She smiles at him. “I know.”

Martin smiles and raises his “solo” brand cup. “To the four of us, thank God there isn’t more of us,” he quotes.

“Here, here!” Tim cheers, toasting and chugging his cup in one gulp.

* * *

As the party winds down and Sasha starts mentioning how tired the drive’s left her, Tim calls for the “welcoming wagon”, as he’s referring to Jon and Cecil and Carlos, to follow him.

“Just for a minute,” he says. “I have some messages from Elias for you.”

Carlos hesitates. “I—”

“You’ll wanna hear this too, Doc.” Tim gestures past the door, holding it open with his shoulder.

Cecil stays outside while Jon and Carlos follow Tim in the office. Tim shuts the door behind them.

“Okay,” Tim says, clapping his hands. “I didn’t wanna ruin the party, but I don’t want us coming in tomorrow and you’re back to your same-old  _ giving Martin a hard time _ self, so a few things.”

Jon raises an eyebrow and crosses his arms. “I’m listening.”

“First, housekeeping.” Tim picks a box up off the floor that hadn’t been there yesterday and drops it unceremoniously on Jon’s desk. “Elias wanted me to give you these statements. Apparently the new guys are moving slower than he’d like, so he’s hoping you can help by labeling with location and doing some of the final recording stuff.”

Jon stares at the box. He’s… not sure how he feels about following Elias’s orders, now that he knows they’re in service to an entity. But at the same time, Jon can’t just say “no”.

“The follow-up documents are all included,” Tim continues. “All he needs is recordings, I guess. I was more concerned with the alarms going off at that point, so I didn’t pay as much attention to his reasoning behind filing as I might’ve liked.”

Jon straightens, attention snapping to Tim like a rubber band. “Alarms?”

Tim waves away the question. “Yes, yes, alarms. Which brings me to my second point.”

Tim moves further in the room and leans back against the edge of Jon’s desk, half-sitting on it.

“So you know about Martin’s mom, right?”

Jon glances at Carlos, who—in equal confusion—is glancing back at him. “Only tangentially. He was her primary caregiver, right?”

“Yeah, well… apparently, while we were here, she had some… complications. She passed a little bit ago.”

Jon’s blood freezes.

“It was… I don’t know all the details, but apparently she was still supposed to have a year or so left, so it’s… a shock. We heard a few hours after— uh… after Sasha arrived, actually.” Tim rubs at the back of his neck. 

“That’s awful,” Carlos says. He swallows. “How’s Martin been taking it?”

Tim half-shrugs. “You know him. He’s trying to pretend like nothing’s wrong, but he’d had to move her to a nursing home when we got this assignment, and… and I won’t pretend to know how he’s feeling, but…” Tim drops his hand and holds it back up in a placating gesture. “Listen, all I ask is for you to go easy on him. Please. He’s…” Tim chews on his words carefully. “He wasn’t in the best shape when we got dumped out of the anchor travel anyway, what with…” Tim gestures at his shoulder and hair, left permanently changed, “and, y’know, the other psychological ramifications of a near death experience. He’s holding up pretty well, all things considered, but I can’t imagine what the mom thing’s doing to him. Just lay off, alright?”

Carlos and Tim both look at Jon.

A myriad of thoughts and subsequent reactions—offense, resentment, defensiveness, anger—pass through one after the other.

But now isn’t the time to be arguing about the benefits of a sharp division between their work and social lives, nor is it the time to talk about workplace protocol and the nature of accommodations. 

Though it smarts that Carlos would think Jon callous enough to not have sympathy for Martin right now.

“I understand,” Jon says.

“Do you?” Tim asks, and this time offense sticks to his throat like taffy.

“If you have a complaint, I’m more than happy to hear it.”

“Jon,” Carlos says.

Tim puts both hands up. “No complaints.” He claps Jon on the shoulder as he passes. “Just making sure.”

Tim closes the door behind him when he leaves.

“Like I wouldn’t go easy on him after that,” Jon mumbles.

Carlos shrugs. “I mean, I get where he’s coming from. You’re not exactly the nicest to Martin.”

“I expect a degree of professionalism from him, but I’m not  _ heartless.” _

Carlos holds his hands up. “I know!” He lowers his hand to the stack of statements and thumbs through the edges. “So what’re you going to do?”

Jon huffs and crosses his arms. “The only thing I can, I suppose. Remind them that the institute will cover the costs for a therapist and give them some leave.”

Carlos nods. “Alright.” He drops his hand. “You wanna head out first or should I?”

Jon snorts. “I really don’t think it’s that important.” He heads for the door, holding it open for Carlos. “After you.”

“There they are!” Cecil calls out, and Carlos smiles, hurrying past Jon and back out into the bullpen.

Jon stands in front of his office and clears his throat to grab the room’s attention.

“In light of the recent circumstances,” he announces, “I do believe everyone here is in need of a well-deserved break. As such, feel free to take another week off, and do remember that the Institute will cover the expenses for any therapy you wish to seek out as a result of this incident.”

“Really?” Sasha asks. “A whole week?”

Jon opens his mouth to argue that he’s already given her a month, she really shouldn’t be shocked, when Tim interrupts him.

“Who are you and what have you done with my boss?” Tim adds.

Jon frowns, pointing the glare of it at Tim. “It was a traumatic experience. Of course I’m going to give you ample chance to recuperate.”

“That’s very nice of you, really!” Martin starts. “But honestly,” Martin puts a hand on his hip and scratches the back of his head with the other, “I’m excited to get back to work.”

Sasha frowns at him.

“C’mon,” Tim says, looping an arm around Martin’s shoulders, “this is practically a  _ miracle, _ and you’re not gonna take advantage of it?”

“I’ve had enough miracles for a little while,” Martin says. “I think it’d be nice to get the ol’ routine going again, thank you very much.”

“You  _ gotta _ give us at least  _ one _ night on the town before going back to the grind!”

Martin shoots a look at Jon before grinning sheepishly at Tim. “Can Jon come along?” he asks.

Sasha’s eyebrows furrow, and Tim opens his mouth, likely to make some snarky reply, so Jon interrupts before either of them can say anything of the sort.

“No, thank you,” Jon says, already starting to stack used napkins and plates. “You all enjoy your team-building. I’ll clean up here.”

He’ll have time to make their acquaintance over the next few workdays. He should let them enjoy themselves in easier kept company for the rest of the night.

Sasha straightens. “I’ll help!”

“No you don’t!” Tim chimes, looping an arm around her shoulders too and turning the trio for the door. “We’re getting out while we still can.”

Tim ushers the other two out the door amidst their bickering.

Cecil hums.

“What?” Carlos asks. Jon looks up, unaware there was anything behind the noise.

“That’s just odd, is all.”

“What is?” Jon asks. He suddenly realizes that maybe rejecting Martin’s offer was rude.

Cecil shakes his head. “I just hadn’t realized Martin had it in him to be that forward.”

Jon is about to ask what Cecil means by “forward”, but the conversation moves on before the thought even crosses his mind.

“Yeah, well…” Carlos bumps shoulders with Carlos as he passes. “Almost dying makes you think about things differently.”

Cecil keeps frowning at the door. “I guess,” he concedes. “Here, let me help, Jon. I’ll wash; you dry?”

“Thank you, that’d be much appreciated.”

* * *

The entity known as Night Vale is only ever as human as Its food. “You are what you eat” and all, but how human is a person when they’re panicked? How human is the act—the feeling—of panic itself?

As delicious as Its recent buffet is, the facsimile of humanity the proximity grants grows tiring. Annoying. Awful.

(Again: hardly His fault, thank you very much.)

Night Vale is a town of secrets, and as such Its agents are always keeping an Eye out.

There are many Strangers in a town like Night Vale—a place high in foot traffic, given its perfect spot between vertices—however, there is one Stranger, in particular, that’s stranger than most.

The day is Groundhog Day. The Night Vale researchers lead the archive crew (minus one, plus another) through the basement and into the main lab space.

“I need proof,” Tim is saying, tapping at his phone. He holds it up and frames Carlos, pressing record. “And action!”

Carlos huffs a laugh. “It’s Groundhog day,” he explains. “The crevices around town are going to temporarily expand, and boars are going to charge out of them when one o’clock hits.”

“But Carlos?” Tim overacts. “What does it mean if the ground crack pigs destroy the lab?”

“I’m getting to that.” Carlos, already tiring of this little show, turns back to his report. “For every building the hogs level, spring gets pushed back by an extra week.”

As Carlos details the important ceremony of Flesh and Buried, Researcher Nilanjana Sikdar briskly approaches her station.

She’s sure the people from London are nice enough, but she’s frustrated past the point to socialize. She can’t find a microbe that’s lasted across all trials with her growth mixture.

The real moment of truth is the natural wood table. For some reason, no matter how successful and promising the other trials were, the table has yet to be affected by a single microbe.

“Mesmerizing, isn’t it?” a voice asks from behind her, and she jumps.

It’s the ugly-cute one with the cold eyes, and he smiles apologetically.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, adjusting his glasses with a hand on the stem. He holds the same hand out to shake. “Martin.”

Nils decidedly does  _ not _ think about the amount of bacteria the average human hand harbors and accepts the handshake. “Nilanjana. Nils, for short.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Nils.” He steps closer to the table and reaches out a hand to touch it.

_ “Careful!” _ Nils spits.

Martin freezes, emotions flickering through his eyes faster than she can read.

“Sorry,” she says, “but there’s— I’m using parts of it for my research, and if you touch certain parts it’ll compromise my data.” She points to a corner, where she knows for a fact she hasn’t applied her growth formula. “Here’s okay, but please try not to stray more than a few inches.”

“What are you doing with it?” he asks. He doesn’t move.

“I’m working on a formula to encourage cell repair for trees like the one this table is made of.” She gestures to her work station—organized in a honeycomb of petri dishes. “Damage to a tree’s bark may seem minimal to us, but it makes the tree significantly more vulnerable to animals and diseases. I’m trying to use microbes to accelerate bark regrowth.” She folds her hands behind her back. “It may seem like not much, but it’s a small step towards protecting—”

“Nothing of the sort! This sounds tremendous!”

Nils stops. Martin’s beaming at her, overjoyed. She hadn’t expected the enthusiasm, and her chest warms at his genuine excitement over her research.

“How’s it been reacting so far?” he asks, stepping closer. “Was it too much trouble to lug up from the basement? If I’d known you were working on something so commendable, I would’ve asked Tim to bring it straight here.”

Nils blinks. “The table’s yours?”

“My institute’s. More or less.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the table was from your work. I asked around, but noone else here knew where it came from so I just assumed someone had tried to redecorate one time and gave up. I—”

“No harm, no foul. You can absolutely use it,” he answers without hesitation. “Our boss made us bring it. We have too much stuff in storage, I think, and he’s trying to find places to put the bulkier items he can’t bring himself to rid of. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you using it, especially for something so important.” Martin’s hand falls to where she’d pointed earlier, and he traces the fractals with his fingertips. “You didn’t answer me earlier.”

She wracks her brain for what he’d asked. “What was the question?”

“How’s the table been reacting to the formula so far?”

Nils frowns. “Nothing significant, yet. Not even with the more promising mixtures from other trials.”

Martin leans closer conspiratorially.

“May I make a suggestion?” he asks in a stage whisper.

“Please.” She matches his tone, though she’s not sure why.

“Try using  _ Beauveria bassiana  _ as your base. I think it might have exactly the missing agent you’re looking for.”

Nils’s brows furrow at the Latin—though on second look, Martin does seem the type—before her eyes narrow in recognition. “That sounds familiar,” she says. “Why does that sound so familiar?”

“It’s a— a fungus?” he says, grin wide despite his stutter. “It gets used in more… eco-friendly pesticides for arthropods.”

* * *

On the other side of the lab, out of earshot from their conversation, Sasha watches Martin and Nils talk. Her eyes dart to Martin’s hand, tracing the web pattern on the table lovingly.

She grimaces.

* * *

Here is the nature of the clairvoyance Its Eye has to offer: some events are immutable. The facts change, but the table of contents—so to speak—remains intact. If one learns how to read the chapter titles and force oneself into the right parts of the narrative, the causes become one’s to control.

There is the truth, and there is reality, and in front of It, these are not interchangeable concepts. Because It deals with humans—their fears—and the difference between physics and psychology is the regularity of exceptions.

The man in Elias Bouchard’s body drums his fingers on his desk. He huffs, coming back to himself.

Jonah Magnus is a man of truths—a man of the Eye, through and through. And the truth is, at this rate, the Not-Them will kill his inheriting archivist. This won’t do. This won’t do at all. Who knows how long it will take to find a proper archivist again, let alone someone able to enter Night Vale?

This would be so much easier if he could enter Night Vale himself.

This would be so much easier if the “person” who  _ can,  _ weren’t quite so… unpleasant.

Well, he will have to see, but if push comes to shove, it can’t be helped.

* * *

> Based on the descriptions, I believe it’s safe to say that Mrs. Treacher’s encounter is consistent with the entity known as the Lonely, with the way Elias described it. It’s a very… insidious evil, it seems. I wonder at how many statements I’ve encountered with the Lonely, but lacked the proper information to contextualize the incident properly.
> 
> I swear, if I didn’t know any better—that he worships an entity of information, for example—I’d call Elias’s negligence over the hazards we might face outright malice.
> 
> [Click]

>   
>  [Click]
> 
> Supplemental.
> 
> I’ve decided, in lieu of some form of written account, to begin chronicling my experiences using extra tapes we have lying around. If I’m going to be using these anyway, I may as well. 
> 
> Work has been… frustrating, to say the least. At the behest of Elias, we’ve begun attempting tentatively to poke around for traces of the anchor again. Nothing at a cursory glance, but I’m… reluctant to try any more rigorous searching techniques yet.
> 
> I’m trying to pay more attention to my assistants, partly to make sure we’re not reopening fresh wounds and otherwise to learn more about them, you understand. I’m trying to be subtle about it, as more obvious attempts are met with needling by Tim in the form of asking if he “switched dimensions” in the interim.
> 
> Martin has been a lot more forward with me, lately. I personally think he needs more time to recover, as the incident has clearly affected him quite a bit more deeply than it has the others, but he won’t hear it. He actually insists on needing  _ more _ time at work, but Tim won’t hear  _ that _ whatsoever.
> 
> Speaking of, Tim and Martin are considerably closer following the incident. This is not especially unexplainable, given Martin’s attempt to push Tim out of the way potentially saving his life, but it is noticeable and therefore notable. Also notable: Tim hovers over my conversations with Martin. I believe he is worried about me “giving Martin a hard time” as he put it, but it’s verging on the point of obsessive. Martin has noticed Tim’s attention as well, as he blushes at the attention every time it happens.
> 
> Tangentially related, Erikas continue to attempt to speak with me. I have been rebuffing or ignoring them where I can. I trust them about as far as I can throw them, and I am quite certain they’re scheming behind our backs. However… Elias has instructed us to find the anchor again, and our search to recover its location is just as fruitless as the last go-round. Despite their manipulations, they are the most knowledgeable resource of information in Night Vale. 
> 
> Even so, I will only agree to conversations thus far if they allow Cecil or Carlos to sit in on them with us. So far, no takers, just as I thought, but it doesn’t help when I run into them at the grocer and they throw words out before I can register their presence.
> 
> There was one thing Erika said while I was attempting to extricate myself from the dairy section of the supermarket that frays at my nerves. They said the reason they keep coming around to speak with me is that I’m… “missing something” from the previous conversations we’ve had. 
> 
> I can’t help but stew on that. The only thing that sticks out anymore from our previous conversations is how they prattled on about some sort of “fate,” so my brain has been rather stuck on the notion. Is being teleported to London really the ‘fate’ they meant back then? Did the anchor… did it kill Martin’s mom somehow? Is that what they meant? Why did she keep talking about these tapes? Why has Sasha been so… antagonistic lately? Why is Tim so defensive of Martin? Something isn’t settling right. I’m tempted to ask Carlos and Cecil about it, but I worry about worrying them for nothing, or worse, putting them in the angels’ sights.
> 
> On the other hand, I sometimes worry that I’m… overthinking everything. That the scare really was the worst of it and I’m jumping at boogiemen of my own creation. Am I dragging out their recovery process by not admitting that maybe, just this once, things really did go better than expected? Or would I be letting my guard down for the real disaster lurking around the corner—the one I could have and SHOULD have kept my eye out for?
> 
> [Wry laughter]
> 
> That’s the part of research I’ve never missed: it always leaves you with more questions than it does answers.
> 
> I’m loath to ask Erika any more questions than I have to. Whatever side they’re on, it’s abundantly clear that it’s not completely mine. That alone is reason to be wary.
> 
> Do I believe they would hurt me to suit their purposes? Quite possibly. Carlos trusts them enough, but all that tells me is that Carlos wouldn’t understand my reservations. After all, he hasn’t been an “outsider” here in quite some time. Carlos said he’s learned to take Erikas’ crypticness with a grain of salt, as it seems to be required by a few of their patrons.
> 
> Still… I wonder what they meant. I’ve been burned by letting them keep information to themselves before, and I don’t intend to allow such a circumstance to happen again.
> 
> [A sigh]
> 
> But I suppose, if they won’t clarify, it can’t be helped. All I can do is wait and see.
> 
> End recording.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's proverb: "What goes up, must go up. That's how motion works." - Isaac Newton


	6. Everything Right is Wrong Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Two new players make their moves, and a wolf is revealed for sheep's clothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and the last chapter were originally combined, but [my beta](twitter.com/bibophilophile/) and I agreed that this works a lot better.
> 
> The crack under your door is exactly the same width as it was yesterday. I promise. Welcome to Night Vale.

A creature, through a yellow-framed lens and smiling all the while, watches Head Archivist Jonathan Sims record a statement. This being, winding their existence around the heart of Its Spiral, goes by many names, with humans favoring their old title of “Michael” and It, obviously, preferring “Its Distortion.” They pay no mind either way. They hear “Michael” and “Distortion” as the same sounds because, really, the intentions are the same. 

For now, they watch, and they smile. The table arrived safely. Perfect. If they’d dragged that disgusting thing all the way across their nice “carpets” only for a sharp turn to set it off early, Its Distortion would be pretty angry.

It is not time for their piece to move, they know, but they do so love to drink in an archivist’s fear.

They feel an invitation—like a doorbell, but more pleasant—echo through their halls. At the end, they know, is Elias Magnus Jonah Bouchard.

Elias will think that the last time Michael set foot in the archives was years ago: not just last week or so, when he brought a table and its contents from point Artefact-Storage to point-where-it’s-needed and back again.

Michael follows the sound of the invitation, and knowing they have a secret puts a smile around their face.

* * *

> Supplemental.
> 
> Still no trace of the anchor. Every time we think we’re getting close, everything changes and our data becomes useless. I’m prepared at this point to believe that the anchor is not only sentient, but playing  _ tag  _ as it were. At this point, asking for guidance—even the angels’—looks more and more appealing. 
> 
> Tim is in no rush to find the anchor again. I can’t necessarily agree with the sentiment at this point, but I understand what he means. Sasha’s become increasingly upset, though I’m beginning to question whether it has to do with work, as I’d originally assumed. She still refuses the meals Martin prepares, working through lunch whenever she can, but confusingly, she leaves with Tim as soon as their shifts allow. Her work continues to be more than acceptable, but if whatever’s bothering her begins to get in the way of her work, I may have to pull her aside and intervene.
> 
> Martin works overtime more often than not, these days. He seems terribly… invested in my progress. He asks me, when I leave my office, if I’d like to join him in the bullpen and chatters my ear off whenever he can.
> 
> I keep having this… terribly selfish and unspeakably rude thought. I’d be afraid to speak it, under normal circumstances, but I’m alone at my flat, right now, and I’ve taken to locking these supplemental tapes in my desk when I’m out. The person that Martin’s become following the anchor… I miss the old Martin. Now that the incident has made him… bolder, he crowds too close to me, always trying to rest his hand on my arm or knee and speaking in a saccharine sweet tone that sets my teeth on edge. He’s obviously trying to curry my favor, and I’m keeping my eye out for why. I don’t like feeling so paranoid about an assistant—especially one who has been through so much so recently—hence the guilt. But I cannot shake the bitterness that steeps in my throat when he sing-songs a hello every time I step foot in the same room.
> 
> I have never claimed to be a personable man, but I think I might begin working from home if it continues being an issue.
> 
> End recording.

* * *

Elias blinks back into himself—Jon’s recording finally finished. Michael stands across the room before Elias can even process that another door’s appeared. He raises an eyebrow.

“Afternoon,” Elias greets. “That was fast.”

“You’re not the only one plugged into the source, Magnus.” Michael’s smile splits his face in two, happy to have won the surprise warranted for a raised brow. Always so easy to please, little Michael Shelley. “We’ve all been feeling the odd little hiccups with our patrons.”

“Yes.” Elias can’t keep the note of disgust from his voice. “The…  _ commentary.” _

“It’s commentary for you?”

“What else would it be for the Eye?”

“I suppose.”

“And yours?”

“An outline. The general shape of something meant to be colored in. Every now and then the Spiral tries to wrap around Him and pull Him out of shape.”

“Does it work?”

“Not always. He’s stubborn.”

“Grounded.” Elias sits back in his chair. “Surprisingly so, actually.”

“Ironically, yes. Still, He will suit Its purposes well enough, when the time comes.”

Elias nods. He thinks the two of them are on the same page about that, but the way the Distortion processes information is incomprehensibly twisted. He couldn’t read Michael’s thoughts if he tried.

“Yes, well,” Elias gestures towards an empty chair across from him. “In any case, it’s good to see you.”

Michael stays standing, as still as the Spiral will let him. “Lying is my business, Magnus, and I don’t appreciate the competition.”

“I’m not lying. I’d wondered for a long time what became of you, and I’m always curious how you’re faring.”

“I’m sure you are. It’s always such a pleasure to see you too.”

Elias’s eye twitches.

Michael crosses the office in a single motion and finally sits. “Let’s skip the rest of the pleasantries. You don’t call me here unless you want something.”

“Quite.” Elias folds his legs. “You’re aware, I’m sure, of a town accessed through a weak edge in reality somewhere around America’s west coast?”

“I didn’t know you kept that body smoking marijuana, Magnus.” Michael’s hinges squeak with laughter. “Just kidding. Night Vale and Night Vale by-products.”

“Charming.” Elias’s mouth remains a sturdy flat line. “Yes, Night Vale. A few months back, I had reason to properly send a team of archival assistants out there.”

“To?”

“Investigate the pupil.”

“They call it the anchor there, actually.” Michael’s smile widens. “And ah, so the hiccups are  _ your _ doing. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, you’ve been meddling quite a bit more lately. I thought age was supposed to grant patience.”

“It’s wisdom.”

“That doesn’t help your case as much as you think.”

Elias calms himself by calling upon the statement of one Helen Richardson in regards to the Distortion. Knowing that Michael, at one time, had felt that same crushing fear, Elias concedes Michael the last word on that insult.

“Cutting to the chase, I need your help to—”

“You must be quite desperate.”

Elias pauses. His eyes narrow. “Pardon?”

“Can no one else run your little errands for you?”

“Your skill set makes you particularly well-suited for what I need.”

Michael hums static. He tilts his head.

“We do make quite the pair don’t we?” he asks. Michael crosses his crosses his crosses his crosses his crosses his legs and rests a heel on Elias’s desk. “One only tells lies, the other only tells truths. We’re like the start of a joke.”

Elias stares a hole into the organ Michael approximates for a shoe, soiling the top of  _ his _ desk. “I don’t lie.”

“Who said either one was you? Rather conceited. I’m disappointed.”

Elias narrows his eyes.

“Which one would you trust? Distortion or Michael?”

Elias continues glaring at him. He thinks about knock-knock-knocking and a doorknob that weeps blood onto an old man’s hand.

“Okay, okay, too easy. The one who tells truths hates your guts. The one who lies is ambivalent. Does that change your answer?”

“I never answered in the first place,” Elias growls. “Stop changing the subject.”

“Then keep it  _ moving,  _ Magnus. A marble on a corkscrew doesn’t stand still just because you don’t like where it’s going.”

Elias breathes in through his nose and out from his mouth. “There’s a Not-Them with them. It’s bound, but obviously that’s no reason to let our guard down. It’s posing itself as their unfortunate colleague.” Elias doesn’t say: It’s taking Jon longer than anticipated to realize something’s amiss.

“And you want me to get it out of there?”

“No. I need you to make sure that, should it escape the hold Adelard Dekker put on it, my archivist escapes with his life.”

Michael tilts his head. “Just him?”

“Just him.”

“You know, you could just as easily solve this whole debacle by telling him what  _ really _ happened to the replaced.”

“What good is an archivist who can’t figure things out for himself?” Michael creaks in what must be a condescending noise. “If you’re so  _ touched  _ by his assistant’s predicament, why don’t you fix it? The distortion’s hallways are boundless.”

Michael shrugs. “It’s only  _ true  _ that there’s nowhere my doors can’t reach. In reality, I can’t set foot or doorstep anywhere near their universe.”

“So  _ can  _ you or  _ can’t _ you?”

“This is why the truth teller hates you, doctor Magnus. If it were as easy as just can or can’t, I’d be out of a job.”

The Eye informs Elias of a lock—hidden from view—around Michael’s heart. Elias calms himself.

“You need to retrieve—”

“For you.”

“For the Institute.”

“Same thing.”

“The specifics are irrelevant.”

“Not to me. Count me out.”

“What—”

“No means  _ no, _ doctor Magnus.”

Elias scowls. “Do you realize what’s at stake here?”

“You’re implying that following your orders is a  _ good _ idea when in desperate times.”

Elias narrows his eyes. “I am swallowing my pride and asking for your help.”

“You don’t swallow your pride unless you have a chaser on hand to make it worth your own while. I don’t think you’ve ever cut your losses to ask for help in your life, and I’m not about to believe that you’ve had a change of heart now.”

Michael’s suddenly behind his chair, still sitting but on air. He unfolds his legs through each other and stands.

“In fact,” he starts, and Elias’s office has three doors again, “I think it’s time for the knight to make their first move.” Michael turns the office around him so he’s facing his door. “Thank you for the permission to meddle in your archival assistants’ affairs. I’m no vampire, but it’s always nice to get Daddy Magnus’s blessing. Good luck with your Stranger problem.”

Elias blinks, and the door is gone, as well as its keeper.

Elias sighs. 

It would seem he’ll have to resort to plan B. If he can’t bring Jon back to the archives, he’ll have to bring the relevant archives to Jon.

* * *

Sasha’s moved into a flat next door to Tim’s. They knock on the wall between them, when they want to hang out, and these days, you can just as easily find Tim in Sasha’s apartment as you can find Sasha in Tim’s. As much as Sasha’s still iffy about going steady with Tim, she can’t deny how special he is to her. She’s not going to lose him.

The flat’s much nicer than her last one, but she think it might have rats. There’s holes chewed through a few of her books and some other things.

She yawns and, eyes closed, drops her keys and purse on the table by the door.

They thump significantly lower, on the floor.

Sasha blinks at where her end table is supposed to be. How drunk had she gotten yesterday? Had she moved it and forgotten? She collects her keys and purse off the floor again, and—

And taking another step into the flat, she sees the table blocking the door into the living room. There’s something on it. Frowning, Sasha moves to investigate.

There’s a notecard on the table, with a phone next to it. Tim’s phone. The card reads: close your eyes when you listen to the voicemail. 

Checking Tim’s phone, there’s only one message in the inbox. She recognizes the number: it’s hers.

Sasha knocks on the wall hard enough to dent it.

In the space of a couple breaths, Tim’s walking through her front door and locking it behind him.

“What’s up?” he asks. “Oh! You found my phone!”

Sasha holds up the notecard. “Do you really think I’ll fall for that?”

Tim hesitates, head cocking. “What?” He takes the card and reads it. His brows furrow, reading it a second time. “What is this?”

“Ha ha. I’m not—”

“Sash.”

His voice is too even. When Tim jokes, he has a very particular cadence he doesn’t break from, and it’s nowhere to be found.

Sasha stares at him, and he stares at his phone.

“Should we listen to it?” he asks.

Sasha swallows. “I guess?”

Tim holds it up to her height and bends down, crowding their heads around the small speaker. He presses the button.

> You shouldn’t have brought the table. Why did you bring the table, Tim? It’s not exactly yours to move. It’s  _ one _ of yours, but not yours, Tim. And  _ certainly _ not your boss’s. 
> 
> Speaking of, you need to stop listening to your boss, Tim. I realize this advice is biased on my part. Elias Bouchard is my antithesis, and even when he wasn’t, I hated him with every fiber of my being. I don’t have much control, outside of Night Vale, but I did what I could where I could. You wouldn’t believe how many pens have exploded in his washer with teeth marks straight through their casing. I know you know how bad pen ink tastes.
> 
> Speaking of teeth marks, I heard that girl telling you there are rats, and I know you believe her. I’m a little disappointed, Tim. You need to pay closer attention. The holes have the jagged but natural curvature of being cut by sharp fingernails and not the chaotic tearing of teeth. Honestly, I’m a little offended you would assume I’d eat paper. And they’re not holes just  _ anywhere, _ Tim. They may only be pictures, but your boss can see through the faces all the same, and I don’t want you hurt because you gave him enough info to predict where and when you’ll be.
> 
> I’m getting away from the point here. There’s so much I want to tell you, Tim. I’ve heard you talk so much—to that girl, in your sleep, on the phone—but this is only the first time I get to reply. 
> 
> I like you, Tim. You’re a good man. Kind and sensitive and charming. I know you want a family someday, Tim, and I want to help you get there. But you brought the table. Why did you have to do that? You’ve made my job so much harder, Tim, and you don’t even realize it. 
> 
> I only message because I want to keep you safe. I want you to have a chance at a life here in Night Vale, and the Not-Them you positively  _ reek _ of when you get back from work is the last thing you need to be dealing with. You’ve already had to deal with the Stranger’s circus once, as I understand it. What’s the saying? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, and “Stand your Ground” comes into effect? Just food for thought, Tim. I’m no friend of the Stranger, myself, and I’m more than happy to help you solve this problem, if you’ll only let me.
> 
> That being said, I’ve also taken the liberty to rearrange your closet. Donate some of your less desirable pieces. You really must organize it better, Tim. You can thank me by not rustling the hangers so much every morning looking for a particular garment when I’m trying to sleep.
> 
> Yours forever and always, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home.

Sasha and Tim stand silent, frozen when the message ends. Phone close to their ears, they listen to nothing but the increasingly familiar staticy breathing of the secret police’s bug listening in.

Tim thinks: is this really happening to him again? Fucking  _ again? _ No… no, this is some kind of sick Night Vale idea of a prank.

Sasha runs after him out of the flat. They forget to lock the door, but that’s okay.  _ She _ takes care of it for those crazy kids.

* * *

> PRE-TRANSCRIPT:
> 
> Elias has described the filing of this transcript as “urgent”. I do not know what about filing could possibly be “urgent”, but many things about Elias elude me. What’s one more? In any case, to be rather frank the others and I are breaking for lunch once I’m through with today’s recording, so let's just get this over with, shall we?
> 
> Statement of Lucy Cooper, regarding the events around the death of her mother, Rose Cooper, in August 1994. Original statement given September fifteenth, 1994. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. 
> 
> Statement begins.
> 
> There is a stranger claiming to be my mother. I don’t know who she is.

* * *

Jon tears open another box labelled with the Institute’s owl insignia. He digs through packing peanuts, only to, again, find nothing but rocks in the bottom.

He’d come down here to record another “supplemental”, only to find that one of the boxes had been opened. Curious, he’d looked inside and there’d been nothing.

That’s when he realized: for all of the luggage that Tim and Martin had brought back from the Institute, Jon hasn’t seen any of those pieces again. Not once. The only exception: the original box of statements to be recorded, but since then, all of the statements he’s read have been priority shipped to him by Elias.

So what  _ had _ they been hauling that needed an entire truck?

The scraping of someone opening the entrance behind him echoes around the cement, and Jon startles. On instinct, he jumps into the nearly empty box and submerges himself in styrofoam peanuts.

“Dragging me away to snog on company time?” Tim’s voice bounces around him. “Feeling rebellious today, aren’t we, Ms. James? What happened to ‘definitely won’t they’?”

“Oh, you  _ wish _ that’s what this was.” Sasha and Tim’s footsteps get closer, and Jon resists the urge to burrow deeper for fear they’ll hear the packing peanuts crackle.

The footsteps stop suddenly, and there’s the sound of a small collision because of it.

“What’s all this then?” Tim asks in an exaggerated accent. There’s a clatter of wood—one of the crate lids, probably—and Jon curses his luck.

“Someone noticed I did a little snooping,” she says. “Let’s just… hope it wasn’t him.”

“Him?” Tim asks.

“We need to talk about Martin,” Sasha says in lieu of an answer.

There’s a chuckle, but it’s forced. “Uh oh, do I have competition now? Has he stolen—”

_ “Tim.” _

Tim’s voice hardens into something scalpel sharp in a way Jon’s never heard from him before.  _ “Sasha.” _

“Look, Tim, I— I know that message shook you up, but—”

“But?  _ But?” _ There’s a step, and Tim’s voice is a stage-whisper of barely restrained rage. “She knew about the  _ circus, _ she said she’s heard me talk in my  _ sleep.  _ She stole my phone  _ and _ yours, put a message from one to the other, and then left it in your apartment.”

“Not everything adds up there, though.”

“Maybe not, but the Stranger parts do. I could tell that my brother was off, I would  _ know _ if those bastards stole someone else, and I won’t be falling for whatever other bullshit this town is trying to trick me into.”

“Okay.” Sasha’s voice is a compromise. “Okay, we don’t have to talk about that. But I really think there’s something to what she was saying. I think that table… it did something, and I think—”

“Sasha. I love you, you know I do, but I can’t… do this again. You’re saying the man who saved my life is the— the same as the thing that killed Danny. You realize that, right?”

“Tim, please. Hear me out? Please.”

There’s a pause. Jon holds his breath in the quiet.

“Were you with him the whole time in those tunnels?”

Jon blinks. Tunnels?

There’s a sigh. “Not the whole time. I’d been wandering for… for I don’t know how long when we met up.” His tone dips into pleading. “He saved my  _ life, _ Sash.”

“I know he pushed you out of the way, but I’ve been thinking, and…” 

There’s silence.

“All the anchor did was bring you back to the archives,” Sasha starts again. “Or, the tunnels under them, to be precise. I mean… we don’t know that it was going to—”

“What’s this really about?”

Another pause.

“Tim.” Her voice is solid steel. “That’s not Martin.”

Jon’s blood goes cold.

“Not this again, Sasha,” but Tim’s voice is pleading, not stern.

“He doesn’t even look remotely the same, Tim.”

Martin… looks differently than he had before the anchor incident?

An alarm goes off in Jon’s mind. He focuses on the voices.

“I don’t look the same, either. Did the clown get me too?”

“But that’s different, Tim, because you  _ know. _ Why do you realize you look different but not Martin?”

There’s a pause.

“Maybe the anchor… did that about my memory of him because he was closer.”

“You’re just assuming that! What if—”

“Sasha, you’re scared. God knows I am. The last month’s been… stressful at best and downright awful at worst, and that’s not counting the effect this town must be having on us. And then we get that message, and it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. The table— artefact storage isn’t anywhere  _ near _ the tunnels.”

“How long were you two in there for, Tim?”

“In where?”

“The tunnels.”

“Oh. I really don’t know.”

“You don’t—”

“There wasn’t exactly sunlight, and our phones weren’t working. You know what this supernatural shit does to tech. That’s not counting how long I spent traveling in the anchor.”

“What do you mean?”

“It distorts time in Night Vale, Sash. I wouldn’t be surprised if that effect was even stronger inside it.”

“No, no, I know. I meant— what do you mean by ‘how long  _ I _ spent traveling’?”

“The anchor spit Martin and I out in different places in the tunnels, and I don’t actually remember the travel part except for the feeling of it.”

There’s a pause.

“You must know how that sounds.”

There’s a sigh. “I know.”

“Please, Tim, you have to believe me.”

“I… Sasha, what do you want me to say? What can we even do, if you’re right?”

“Corner him and find out where he’s keeping Martin!”

_ “How?” _

“We hold that table of his hostage!”

“That’s a horrible plan, Sasha. You don’t know what that table can do.”

“But—”

“I can’t lose— Danny and then maybe…” A sigh. “If you’re wrong, I won’t let you do something crazy and get yourself killed, and if you’re right… well, I guess that goes double.”

There’s a pause.

“So that’s it, then. You don’t believe me.”

“It’s more complicated than that. I believe you, I just…”

“I understand.”

“I trust you, it’s just—”

“Tim. I know. And I get it, I do, but… I need to pay attention to what my gut says on this one.”

There’s footsteps, but only one set of them. Then, a pause.

“For the record,” Sasha’s voice is quieter, “I hope you’re right.”

Sasha leaves. Tim’s footsteps echo after her.

Twenty minutes after Tim’s followed Sasha out, Jon still sits in an empty crate, thinking.

He’s sure there’s a lot of parts to that conversation he doesn’t know about, and he’d give anything to be able to understand them.

The impersonator is probably not Tim. It could still be Sasha, and she’s trying to throw him off by accusing Martin…

But, no, because Jon’s the only one who began questioning, and only in his supplemental journal tapes, which he locks in a drawer in his doubly locked office, and she didn’t know Jon was here.

Jon sits, buried in styrofoam, and thinks about what to do.

* * *

The skin Not-Them wears isn’t His, but it still works for the thing’s purposes. It holds Him over Not-Them, and It feeds on His reactions each time they call Not-Them by His name.

It will have to come up with a new feeding habit, however. He’s nearly forgotten why it hurts—the name repeating until it hardly seems like a word at all, let alone something that once applied to Him. It will not be long before the sound of it applied to Not-Them stops hurting Him entirely, the same way He became numb to the fact that the skin Not-Them wears is His mother’s.

* * *

“And Sasha?” Jon starts, nonchalantly, like he’s just remembered to say it.

She looks up.

“Can I see you in my office?”

* * *

“I have something to show you,” Jon says. “Away from the others.”

Sasha’s brows furrow. “O… kay?”

Jon checks through the keyhole to double-check that there’s no shadow blocking the light. When he’s sure, he moves back to his desk.

For the first time, Jon clicks “play” on a recorder. His own voice greets him.

> Statement of Lucy Cooper, regarding the events around the death of her mother, Rose Cooper, in August 1994. Original statement given September fifteenth, 1994. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. 
> 
> Statement begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's proverb: every hour is happy hour if you don't know how time works. Ignorance is bliss.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! I hope you liked it, and PLEASE feel free to leave comments they mean the world to me.  
> [Also, please feel free to come yell about TMA or Night Vale with me on twitter!!!](https://twitter.com/sphealrical)


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